Dancing Through Life
by Vi908
Summary: *Sequel to STLD* Caroline is oblivious to all that is going on in the world-werewolves and vampires included. When Seth Clearwater imprints on her, she had no choice but to be dragged into the world she didn't even know existed, kicking and screaming.
1. Gravity Moves

This is the companion story to Save the Last Dance. It's a sequel of sorts so if you haven't read the first story you might want to go back and read it beacause in later chapters, you will need to recall information from Save the Last Dance to understand what exactly is going on.

I was really upset about ending Save the Last Dance and I thought about doing a sequel involving Bella and her story, but it didn't really sit right with me. For right now, I think Bella's story is over and another one is beginning. Once this story is over, I might go back and write some more about Bella, but I haven't made up my mind yet.

This story is my brain child. Besides the characters Stephenie Meyer has created, it is completely my own. I really hope everyone will enjoy this story as much as they enjoyed my last story. Right now, this is going to to be a completely different story because there is a new narrator that you have to get to know. After the whole background starts to melt into place, it will start to be more of a sequel and less of a completely different story.

So, here is Dancing Through Life, and yes, the title does come from the song from Wicked, the musical, although it really has nothing to do with the song.

Vi908

* * *

"_It's so hard to describe. It's not like love at first sight, really.  
It's more like…_gravity moves_. When you see _**her**_, suddenly it's  
not the earth holding you here anymore. She does."_

_-Jacob Black in _Eclipse

* * *

"Caroline, I can't believe you talked me into doing this stupid volunteering thing with you this summer," Ava groaned as we cruised smoothly down the streets of Port Angeles in her black Hyundai Sonata.

"It won't be that bad," I told her. I had talked her into helping out at the ballet studio we had danced at since we were four years old. "Don't you remember when the older girls used to come in and help us? We loved it."

Ava Morgan and I had known each other since we were four years old. We had met on the very first day of ballet class and quickly formed a bond. At sixteen years old, we were both still dancing together and she had grown into my best friend. Even though we were best friends, we were very different. I considered myself to be an optimist, while Ava usually saw the glass half-empty. Ava loved hiking and anything that involved outdoors and nature. I, on the other hand, hated the great outdoors; I was more of an indoors type of girl. I would rather sit inside and curl up with a nice book than go camping. I was dark haired and dark eyed with very fair skin while Ava was blonde, blue-eyed and golden brown. She was the knockout between the two of us. Ava took a great deal of pride in her appearance, and while I did enjoy looking nice, I was very low maintenance. The only thing that really brought us together was ballet. It was both of our passions.

"What are we going to be doing anyway?" She asked as she parked the car about a block away from our studio. The studio we danced at was in the middle of downtown Port Angeles and there was very limited parking. We always had to park really far away.

"I don't know. Probably just helping out around the studio with the little girls," I shrugged as we walked the rest of the way, our matching black dance bags slung over our shoulders.

"What have you gotten me into?" Ava said mostly to herself. It was a known fact that Ava did not have any patience whatsoever with children.

As we got to the ballet studio we both dearly loved, we found it busting with people inside, like it usually was during this time of year. It was the beginning of the summer term and tons of moms would be bringing their little girls in to start ballet classes within the next few weeks, and like the beginning of every new term, Madame Levine, the owner of the ballet studio, was running around like a chicken with her head cut off.

"Ah, good, Ava, Caroline, you're here," She practically sprinted up to us, breathing heavily. Her forehead was covered in sweat. Madame Levine was a short, plump woman of about 55. She had short, super curly red hair that was obviously not her natural hair color and big brown eyes. Her face was always heavily made up with light blue eye shadow and bright red lipstick. Although she didn't look like it, she was a very good ballet instructor—probably the best one in Port Angeles. "Ava, I want you to take the younger girls and go through stretching, and Caroline, you man the front desk."

"What?" Ava cried out indignantly. I wasn't too happy with my job either. I would rather be doing what she was assigned to do. "Can't we switch?"

"I don't have time for this," Madame Levine ran off in a flurry flocked by mothers trying to get her attention. That was a very Madame-esque reaction.

"Good luck," I told Ava as she headed towards the studio room. She looked very pissed off. Hopefully she wouldn't be too rude to the kids and scare them off.

"I'm going to need it," She grudgingly trudged out of my eyesight, and I laughed. Ava was always overdramatic. One afternoon of stretching with the little girls wasn't going to kill her like she thought it would.

The front desk, which no one was sitting at currently, was visible from the minute you walked in the door usually, but now, it was surrounded by plenty of mothers waiting to be reassured that their children would be well taken care of. I sat down on the comfortable office chair only to be bombarded by questions from every direction. I took a deep breath before trying to calmly answer every one of them.

It took about twenty minutes to square away all of the questions the mothers had to ask. After they had thought of everything they possibly could, I had sent them to the parents' waiting room where they could look through a big window and see their daughters dancing in the studio. That left me all by myself with nothing to do. There was an old computer on the desk, and I didn't have anything better to do than to play Solitaire, a game at which I was horribly bad at.

About five minutes later and three lost games of Solitaire later, I was interrupted by the tinkling of bells, a signal that someone had just entered the front door, and the sound of voices.

"Come on, Seth, we're already late," A male voice said. It was very strange to hear a man in the ballet studio. It was usually just mothers who brought their daughters; it was supposed to be some kind of bonding experience.

"Quil, I don't understand why you had to--"Another male voice said, but it cut off abruptly in the middle of a sentence.

I minimized my game and finally looked up to see who was here and was I surprised or what. Two extremely tall, extremely good looking boys, no, they looked more like men, had entered along with a cute little girl. All three of them had the same shiny, inky black hair and silky russet colored skin. It was easy to tell that they lived on the Quileute reservation in La Push. One of them, he was bulkier and maybe a little bit shorter, had the tiny girl by her hand. At most, she looked four or five. The other man was younger looking and not as muscular as the first, but there was no denying he was strong. The weird thing about it was that he was staring very oddly…at me.

"Hi," I said awkwardly, trying to ignore the cute guys staring at me. I hoped I didn't have anything stuck in my teeth or on my face. "How can I help you?"

"I need to sign Claire, here, up for dance lessons," The bulkier one said. I smiled at the little girl, Claire, and she giggled and waved at me.

"Okay, just fill out these forms for me, please," I handed him a clipboard with several sheets of paper on it. Afterwards, I got up from behind the desk and walked over to Claire. "Claire, do you want to go join the other girls?"

Claire nodded and I offered my hand to her. The younger man was still staring at me as I led Claire off to the studio where the other girls her age were. As I walked back, I looked in one of the mirrors to make sure I didn't have anything stuck in my teeth or on my face. I didn't. I could only imagine why he was staring at me so strangely.

When I walked back into the lobby, the two men were standing close together, whispering, but when they saw me, they jumped apart. Now, both of them were staring at me. I sat back behind the desk silently, wishing I was anywhere but here. I tried to pretend that I didn't know that they were looking at me, but it was hard. Their gazes made me squirm.

"So, do you, uh, dance here?" The bulkier one asked me after we had a long period of sufficiently awkward silence. I was grateful to him for breaking the ice in the room.

"Yeah, I do. I have for twelve years," I told him. Then, I added in something else. "My name is Caroline Jones, by the way."

"Oh, I'm Quil," He gestured to himself before pointing to his friend, the one staring at me, "and this is my friend Seth."

"It's nice to meet you," I smiled, tossing my dark brown hair over my shoulder. Seth closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply. I wondered why he did that. He was extremely cute, but he was rather odd.

"Why aren't you dancing?" Seth spoke up for the first time. A weird feeling ran through me when I heard his voice. It was beautiful, if you could call a voice beautiful. I wouldn't mind hearing him talk more.

"I'm volunteering here during the summer," I explained to them. Seth seemed to be paying close attention to every single word I said. "On the days I don't have classes, I'll be up here helping Madame Levine. She always needs extra help during the summer term."

"You'll be up here a lot then?" Seth asked, his voice once again stirring feelings deep inside of me. I wasn't sure if I liked these feelings.

"Uh, yeah," I responded. Seth was really good looking and he seemed to be interested in me. Something had to be up.

I wasn't used to having attention showered on me from handsome guys. With a best friend as pretty and blonde as Ava, it was natural for boys to overlook me as the girlfriend type. I had always been the _friend_. To be honest, it never really bothered me. I had dated a couple of guys for short periods of time, but I preferred to be single. Now that a guy as cute as Seth was paying attention to me, I had no idea what to do. I just tried to channel Ava. She always seemed to know what to do around guys.

Half an hour and some small talk later, class was dismissed and the mothers and their daughters came pouring out of the studio. Quil and Seth stood, waiting for Claire, who I found out was Seth's cousin, looking hysterically out of place. They were at least two heads taller than everyone else in the room. I tried my hardest not to laugh. Claire was one of the last girls out of the studio, and Ava, who looked like she had been trampled by a herd of wild elephants, was rushing out behind her.

"Quiw, that was so fun," Little Claire ran up to Quil and he hoisted her up into his arms. I couldn't help but smile. I loved kids. Ava looked like she was about to be sick while Seth continued staring at me.

"See you next week, Claire," I waved to her as Quil carried her out of the studio. She smiled and they both waved good-bye at me. Seth was out the last one out of the door. He looked back at me and smiled widely. His grin was so huge and contagious that I had to smile, too.

The moment he walked out the door, Ava turned to me and started her interrogation. "Okay, what was that all about?"

"What was what all about?" I tried to act like I didn't know what she was talking about. The less Ava knew about this, the easier it would be. Don't get me wrong, I do love Ava. She is my best friend, but she was too interested in finding me a boyfriend. I wasn't very happy about that.

"Don't you play dumb with me, Caroline Aurora Jones. You know what I am talking about," She put her hands on her hips and gave me the attitude she was known for. "What was going on between you and that hottie? That look he gave you…it was like you were water and he had been in the desert without any for years."

I didn't say anything. I just looked at her and raised my eyebrow.

"What?" Ava said. "Okay, maybe that wasn't the best analogy, but it was true. There was some serious chemistry going on between you two. You can't deny it."

"Whatever," I rolled my eyes. I probably wouldn't ever see him again. There was no reason to get my hopes up over something that wasn't going to happen. Besides, Seth had some weird kind of staring problem.

"So…what's his name?"

I laughed. Ava had a rather one track mind when it came to boys. "It's time to just go home."

* * *

"Mom, I'm home," I announced as I let myself into my house. I wasn't sure if my mom was home from work yet.

"Hey, Squirt," A voice I hadn't been expecting to hear said.

"Ethan! I thought you weren't coming home for another two weeks," I jumped into my older brother's arms. Ethan was a freshman, now a sophomore, at the University of Washington in Seattle. We had always been close as kids. Ever since my dad had walked out on us when I was six, Ethan had always been there for me. It had been really hard on my mom and me to live without him the past year.

"Well, I decided not to go to Florida with Katie. I figured it was time to come home," Katie was Ethan's girlfriend he had been dating for the past two years. Her family owned a beach house down in the Gulf of Mexico and Ethan had been planning on staying with them after his school got out, but that was Ethan. He was always sacrificing what he wanted to do for what he thought was right. Even though we didn't always get along, he really was a great brother.

"You didn't have to do that," I hit him playfully on the shoulder. "Mom and I can take care of ourselves just fine, thank you very much."

"It's no problem, really," Ethan smiled. "Besides, I was ready to see my two favorite girls: Mom and Ethel."

I smacked him again. Ethel was our old cat that Mom had since before I was born. She was so fat and old se could barely walk around anymore. Most of the time, she just sat on the couch staring at me with her beady little eyes. She didn't like me very much.

"Okay, so maybe I missed you a little bit, too," He admitted.

"Caroline, I'm home," My mom called out as she entered the back door. She was still dressed in her work clothes, scrubs. My mom, Phoebe Jones, was a dental assistant.

"Mom, look who is home," I smiled and Ethan went and hugged her. He had always been a Momma's Boy.

"Ethan," She hugged him back happily, her dark brown hair flowing off her petite shoulders. I had been told numerous times that I looked like my mom. We both had the same dark hair, brown eyes, and fair skin. Our facial features and build were pretty similar, too. However, my brother looked like my father, a man I hadn't seen in ten years. I could barely remember him. From pictures I had snagged from my mom's old wedding album, I could tell that they both had the same crystal blue eyes.

I could barely remember a time when it hadn't been Ethan, Mom, and me. When Ethan and I were kids, she used to call us the three musketeers; we always did everything together. Our lives weren't perfect. For a long time, it had been hard on us, living on one income. We had never gone without anything we needed, but never had much to spare. Now, things had leveled out. My life was exactly as I wanted it to be. I wouldn't change a thing.

As I sat in my living room catching up with my brother, I could not stop thinking about Seth. It was strange that I couldn't get him off my mind. I had only met him once and talked to him for less than an hour. Why was I still thinking about him?

"Are you alright, Sweetheart?" My mom asked. She knew me better than anyone, even Ava. I could always tell her anything, which wasn't the case with Ava. "You look a little out of it."

"I'm fine," I smiled, shoving Seth into small corner in the back of my mind.

* * *

Well, there's chapter one. Depending on the reaction to the story (if there are a lot of reviews I will update quicker), expect another chapter within in the next week or two.

Thanks so much for reading, now please, please, please, review for me. It means a lot.


	2. Prince Charming

Chapter 2 is here! But, seriously, guys? Two reviews? Two? You guys have to do better than that! I know you can.

Violet

I don't own anything.

* * *

It had been a very long two weeks since I saw Seth at the ballet studio. He hadn't come back the next week or the next week with Quil and Claire. I had been secretly hoping that he would come back and smile at me and talk to me some more, but I wouldn't admit that out loud, especially not to Ava who had jumped on the Seth-as-Caroline's-next-boyfriend bandwagon. I even sacrificed working with the cute little girls so I could sit in the lobby and talk to Seth if he came. When he hadn't shown up, I was mad at myself for actually thinking that some guy I had met once and talked to for half an hour would show up at some ballet studio just to talk to me. I was too embarrassed to ask Quil where he was, and it never came up in the short conversations we had when he took Claire to dance classes.

"Are you upset that he didn't come?" Ava asked me as we stretched at the beginning of our ballet class. Even she noticed my dejected mood, though I was trying desperately to hide it. I don't know why I had actually thought that he would. He was just some stupid guy that I barely knew.

"No, of course not," I lied to her and myself. Who was I kidding, I was really looking forward to seeing Seth again, but I wasn't sure if I was ever going to. The chance of running into him anywhere other than the ballet studio was next to impossible; he lives in La Push while I live in Port Angeles.

I wasn't sure if Ava believed my lie or not, but she didn't say anything else and just continued stretching out her muscles. Ballet class always made me feel better. I could just go to class and forget everything else that had happened during the day. Whether I had failed a test or gotten in a fight with a friend or anything else that made me sad or angry, I could just go to class and dance it all out. When I danced, I just let the emotions I was feeling flow into what I was doing. I felt so at ease…so _right_.

Today wasn't any different from the other bad days. I let all my frustrations out in the variation I was working on as my fellow dancers sat back and watched. I was now working on Gamzatti's variation from Act 2 of _La Bayadere_, one of my favorite ballets about tragic love triangle between a man named Solor and the two women he was stuck between: the charming temple dancer that he loves, Nikiya, and the beautiful, but manipulating Princess Gamzatti who he is betrothed to. I had seen it a few times at the Pacific Northwest Ballet when they had performed it last fall. It was simply beautiful.

As I danced the variation, I didn't think about just the steps, that wasn't what ballet was all about. I thought about the emotions, the way Gamzatti felt as she showed off her beauty for Solor and her father, which was what was going on in the variation. I put as much of my emotions into as I could, and by the end of the variation I was panting from all of the exertion. I was exhausted and quickly went and took a seat between Ava and our other friend Madeline on the floor.

The rest of class went by quickly, with some of the other girls doing variations that they were working on. Ava did a beautiful interpretation of the White Swan variation from Act 2 of _Swan Lake_, and some of the others did Kitri's variations from _Don Quixote_ and Aurora's variations from _Sleeping Beauty_. I watched, but I wasn't all there mentally. I was still thinking about Seth for some odd reason, and I was berating myself for it. I didn't know why I was making such a big deal out of nothing. He was just a guy.

"Caroline, can you stay after class for a minute?" Madame Levine asked me after class was dismissed. "I need to talk with you about something."

"Sure," I told her. I grabbed my duffel bag and quickly took off my point shoes and put on a pair of comfortable flats. They looked strange with the leotard I was wearing, but I didn't especially care. I was just in ballet class.

"Have you thought about doing any summer intensives this summer?" She asked me inquisitively.

"Not really," I admitted. I had done an intensive, which is basically a summer program that some ballet companies put on where you can learn new things and get some more opportunities for scholarships and such, the past few years at the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, but I hadn't planned on doing one this year. Some of them could be very expensive, and I also liked having some free time to hang out with my friends. I loved ballet, but I did like to have time off, too.

"Well, I honestly think you could benefit from going to one this year, and not just the one in Seattle. The Joffrey Ballet puts on a great intensive," She told me. The Joffrey Ballet was a ballet company based in Chicago, and it was one of America's top ballet companies. It was also one of my favorite ones as well.

"Isn't it a little late now?" Usually, you had to audition for intensives in the late spring or early summer, and I wasn't really prepared for an audition as of right now and it was probably a little late to sign up.

"No, they are still holding some auditions in Seattle next weekend," Madame Levine explained, pulling a brochure off of the stool she sat on during rehearsals. "I think you could be ready if you dance like you did today. That was very good, Caroline. I don't think I've ever seen you dance like that before. You have always been good, but you had so much intensity and passion. I really felt like you were Gamzatti."

I blushed. I had never been one for praise and attention, which was strange since I was a ballerina and longed to be on the stage. "Thank you, Madame Levine. I'll think about it."

Ava was waiting for me when I walked out of the studio. She demanded to know what Madame Levine had talked to me about. I filled her in on all of the information as we walked to my car, a silver VW Passat.

"The Joffrey Ballet? Wow," Ava gushed. She too loved the Joffrey. We had seen them together in Seattle when they were touring last spring. Their version of _Romeo and Juliet _was to die for. It was so stunning that I was practically crying during the balcony pas de deux, it was that good. "That's a very prestigious honor. Are you going to do it?"

"I'm not sure if I can be ready by next week," I groaned. That was a very short period of time to get ready for an audition. Normally, I would spend weeks, maybe even months, preparing for something as important to me as this.

"You should definitely do the Gamzatti variation," Ava told me, supporting me. She had decided to do the Anaheim Ballet intensive this summer for a week. It would be later on in July. "It was so great this afternoon. You will blow all the other girls out of the water if you do it like you did earlier."

I smiled. Ava was a great friend, and I knew she would be there with me at the audition without even asking her. She was very supportive, and I was incredibly thankful to have a best friend like her. She didn't always like everything I did, especially when I chose to sit at home instead of hanging out at the movie theater or going to the book store instead of going to the mall, but I knew I could constantly count on her when it came to ballet. Ballet was the one thing that the two of us could always agree on, despite all of our differences. I had been to so many of her auditions that I lost count, and she had always been there cheering me on when I needed her.

"Changing the subject," Ava said in a sing-song voice. "We have been invited to a bonfire. In La Push."

"What?"

"Yeah, I saw your friend Quil when he was picking up that cute little girl and he recognized me and told me that he and a bunch of his friends were having a bonfire down on the beach Friday night and that we were invited," She filled me in on the details. My mind strayed to Seth and I wondered if he would be there. I could tell Ava was thinking that, too. She really wanted me to be happy, and apparently she saw something between the two of us for the short time she saw us together. She hadn't dropped the subject of him since.

"That's…nice," I barely knew Quil, and besides him, Seth, and Claire, I knew no one in La Push. It was weird that he invited me to a bonfire along with Ava, who he knew even less than me.

"Is that all you have to say?" Ava laughed. "Aren't you wondering if that hot Quileute guy is going to be there?"

I chose not to answer her question, but she knew what it meant: yes.

"It's going to be so much fun," She squealed. "I'm going to make it my personal goal to find this Seth guy and get you two together."

"Ava, no," I told her. I didn't want her to interfere. Besides, we didn't even know if Seth was going to be at the bonfire. Quil had only said that a bunch of his friends would be there. He hadn't mentioned Seth by name. "Just leave it alone."

"Whatever you say," She rolled her eyes and didn't say anymore about it, but I could still tell she was thinking about it and wasn't going to leave it alone any time soon. It was very easy to read Ava. I had known her for years and most of the time she showed her emotions and her thoughts clearly on her face.

* * *

Before the bonfire Friday night, I spent a long time trying to find something to wear. It was crazy. I had never been like this. Sure, I liked to look nice, but I didn't usually dress to impress people. I wore what I thought was cute and comfortable, but as I searched for an outfit to wear, I couldn't help but think about Seth. I wanted him to think I looked good. I had gone through my whole closet at least three times before I called for backup.

"Mom, help!" I yelled urgently. I only had an hour before I needed to leave to pick up Ava and I still had to blow dry my hair, which took at least twenty minutes since my hair was so long and thick.

"Are you okay?" She ran in frantically. She sounded worried.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just need help finding and outfit--"

"You mean, you yelled help for no reason at all except to find an outfit?" She raised an eyebrow at me. "I thought maybe you had hurt yourself."

"Mom, I am fine," I said slowly for confirmation. "Now, please, I need your help. I have no idea what to wear."

"What about that strapless yellow sundress you have?" She suggested. My mom, unlike me, always had a knack for clothes and fashion. As much as I tried, I wasn't really a fashion diva. She always went shopping with me, even at sixteen. She was a much better fashionista than me.

"It's probably going to be a little cold tonight," I threw out. Even with the bonfire and it being summer, it was the Olympic Peninsula. It would be a little chilly out on the beach at night.

"That dress with the yellow and pink flowers looks so cute on you. You could wear it with that light yellow sweater you got at the Gap," She suggested again. I really liked that outfit, and I was running close on time so I decided to wear that. It was casual and comfortable, but it was also super cute and would be warm enough to wear at night.

"Thanks, Mom. You are a lifesaver," I snatched the dress and sweater out of my closet and threw it on as quickly as I possibly could.

"That is what I'm here for," My mom drifted out of the room smiling. I could tell she was trying to hold in her laughter at my frantic behavior.

I finished getting ready, leaving some of my hair to dry by itself and throwing on a little hint of makeup. I put on a pair of gold gladiator sandals, showing my ugly feet from years of ballet, and I ran out the door in a hurry. I was already late to pick Ava up.

We had decided to ride to La Push together because, first of all, it was easy to get lost if you didn't know your way down there, and, secondly, we practically knew no one. Quil would be there, but we didn't know him all that well. I had only talked to him a couple times, and none of our conversations had ever been anything other than polite small talk. He was very nice and I could see myself being friends with him if we ever got to know each other better.

"Maybe I'll find myself a hot Quileute guy," Ava sighed I drove down the winding path to the beach. It had taken about an hour to get down to La Push.

"You do that," I said absently. I could see some guys gathering down on the beach and helping build the bonfire. The sun had not set yet so I could somewhat make out faces of those down near the pile of driftwood. I caught myself searching for Seth among them, but I didn't see him.

"Stop it," Ava popped me on the shoulder. "Don't look for him. Let him look for you. Play hard to get."

"What if he doesn't remember me?"

"Of course he remembers you, Silly Goose. I saw the way he was looking at you," She told me as she reapplied some lip gloss. "No one just randomly looks at people like that. There was definitely some chemistry, Caroline."

I hoped what she said was right.

I parked my car in the small parking lot beside one or two other cars. I had guessed earlier that most of the people at this party would be from La Push, and from the lack of cars in the parking lot, it seems I had guessed right. I smoothed down my hair and took a deep breath before I got out of the car. I grabbed my sweater off the backseat and put it on before heading down to the beach with Ava, who was wearing a white eyelet skirt with a simple plain blue t-shirt on top. She looked great, like she always did, and I could tell that she hadn't been running around in her bedroom looking for something to wear like I did.

"Hey, Caroline, Ava, you guys made it," Quil walked over to us once he spotted us. He gave us both short side hugs. "It's good to see you guys outside of leotards and ballet studios. I was beginning to think that you guys didn't own regular clothes."

Ava and I both laughed hard. I hadn't thought about that. Quil had only seen us at the ballet studio wearing tights, black leotards, and with our hair pulled back in buns. It must be strange for him to see us looking so different.

"Thanks for inviting us," Ava said to him.

"Ah, it's no problem," He answered. "Besides, it's nice to have two more pretty girls at the party. Here, let me introduce you to some of the guys."

Quil led us over in the direction where a crowd of extremely tall, good looking guys stood. It was like the first time I met Quil and Seth in the ballet studio only there were more of them now.

"Guys, these are my new friends Caroline and Ava. They dance at the studio where Claire goes," Quil introduced us. "Caroline, Ava, these are my friends Sam, Embry, Paul, and Jared."

They, like Quil, were very friendly and nice to us. Even if Seth wasn't going to be here, I could see myself having a good time with these guys. They joked around and made us laugh so hard I thought I was going to fall over.

"Are Leah and Seth coming down tonight?" I heard the guy named Jared ask Sam, who seemed like the oldest and the leader of their tight-knit group. My ears perked up at the sound of Seth's name. I knew it was wrong, but I eavesdropped on their conversation.

"Yeah, Seth said that they would stop by as soon as they could. They had something to do today," Sam shot a look with Jared that I couldn't miss. It was strange, like they knew something that they couldn't say out loud. I didn't dwell on it long. "I know he wants to be here."

My mind went back to Seth and this Leah girl. Who was she? Was she Seth's girlfriend? I bet she was. A good looking guy as nice as Seth could not be single. I was disappointed that Ava had been wrong, but I tried not to show it. I wanted to have fun tonight. I would just have to stay away from Seth and his girlfriend.

"Caroline? Earth to Caroline," Ava waved her hand in front of my eyes, and I snapped out of my train of thought.

"Oh, sorry," I blushed slightly. Who knows how long I had been standing there looking like I was sleep walking with my eyes glazed over and my mouth hanging open. "I spaced out there for a moment."

"We noticed," Embry, one of the guys we had met, said. He was really cute and Ava had been drawn to him since we first walked over. She had been talking to him ever since they had been introduced.

"So is your friend Seth coming? We met him up at the ballet studio a few weeks ago. He was nice," Ava said stealthily. She might look all innocent and sweet underneath all that blonde hair and blue eyes, but really, she knows how to get exactly when she wants when she wants it. That girl is very tricky, and poor Embry did not know what was coming for him.

"Oh, yeah, he mentioned something about that earlier," Embry said and Ava and I exchanged looks that went unnoticed by him. Seth had talked about when we met? "Seth will be down in a little while with his older sister, Leah. I think he had to work, and couldn't get off to come down here sooner."

So this Leah was his older sister. It made me feel a lot better to know Seth didn't have a girlfriend and that I wouldn't have to avoid him all night. I secretly rejoiced in this new information Embry had shared with us.

We had been talking to Embry for a while when it started to get dark and more of the Quileute teenagers started showing up. We met Emily Young, the young woman who had been mauled by a bear a few years ago who was Sam's fiancée and cousin to Seth and Claire, and with her was Kim, Jared's girlfriend. They were usually the only girls besides Leah, who I learned kept to herself a lot, who came to these types of things. They were very grateful to have us at the bonfire.

"Seth should be here any minute," Emily announced to a small group of us that was standing around and talking. I could see her sharing a look with Kim and then saying something. I swear I heard my name, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure.

Quil's friends had been very welcoming to us, and about thirty minutes into the bonfire, I felt like I was one of them. Emily was so nice, and at first, it was hard not to stare at the scars that marred the side of her pretty face, but after a short period of time, I forgot they were there. Her personality was so wonderful that it made her more beautiful, despite the scars from the bear attack that had disfigured her face. I could see why everyone loved her. Kim was nice, too, but she was a little quieter than Emily. She, like Emily, had a great personality and an exotic look to her that made her very pretty. All of the guys we met were welcoming as well. They were very gentlemanly, always making sure we had something to drink or what we needed, but fun at the same time. They joked around a lot.

"Seth," Embry called out to him, smiling. He was coming towards us from the parking lot. When I saw him, I felt my little heart start beating faster involuntarily. I shook my head, trying to get control of my brain again so I wouldn't make a fool of myself. "Look who's here."

"Caroline, hey," He said warmly, and, surprisingly, he hugged me. He treated me as if we were old best friends who hadn't seen each other in a while. When my body touched his, I was shocked to find that he was so warm, almost burning up, but he didn't seem uncomfortable in the heat. It didn't appear to bother him at all. "I haven't seen you in a while."

I smiled, my mind reeling to find something to say. Then I remember Ava, who had not officially met Seth, yet. I thought it best to introduce them and let the conversation flow from there. "Seth, this is my best friend Ava. Ava, this is Seth."

Ava seemed to really like Seth, and the more she talked to him, the more she thought that he like me. She told me this when he went to go get us bottles of water. "That guy likes you, Caroline."

"We've only met twice," I shook my head. He had been very attentive to me tonight, but he had also been very nice to Ava. "He can't like me in that short amount of time."

"Have you ever heard of a little thing called love at first sight?" I rolled my eyes. That was Ava. She was a hopeless romantic, while I was a little more realistic of the two of us.

"Ava, that stuff only exists in fairytales and Disney movies."

"Well, then," She said. "Maybe Seth is your Prince Charming."

"I'm no princess," I laughed. It was true. I was never the little girl who liked to pretend she was a damsel in distress and waiting for her knight and shining armor to come save her from the evil dragon. I had always wanted to be the one slaying the dragon and having really good hair at the same time.

"You stay here," She commanded me. "I have to go tell Embry something."

"Why do I have a strange feeling that you are trying to get me and Seth alone and that when you leave me you aren't coming back?" I asked her, catching onto her 'brilliant' plan. Ava had a lot of 'brilliant' plans while we were growing up and they usually ended up with someone, namely me, getting seriously injured or us getting grounded. Sometimes, they ended with both.

"Because that is exactly what I'm doing," She scurried off before I had a chance to say anything else. I sighed; at least I wouldn't have her here bugging me anymore. She was my best friend and I loved her, but she could get a bit overwhelming.

Seth got back with our water a few minutes after Ava ran off. "Where did Ava go?"

"Oh, she had to talk to Embry or something. That's what she told me."

"Embry looks as if he likes her a lot," Seth observed. He was so tall that he could see them where they were over by the bonfire. I could only see sudden glimpses of Ava's blonde hair that was blowing in the light breeze and a guy I guessed was Embry. It was dark and I was at least a foot shorter than Seth.

"They barely even know each other," I laughed at him. Embry and Ava had met less than an hour ago. They couldn't like each other yet.

"That doesn't matter," Seth told me. He started walking down the beach and I followed him.

"You sound like Ava," I rolled my eyes. He did. I couldn't imagine that a guy like Seth could believe in something as hokey as love at first sight. It just seemed weird.

"Well, Ava sounds like a smart girl to me," He smiled brightly. Being around Seth when he smiled was like being around the sun. I was convinced that he could light up a whole room with his smile. His grin was so broad and infectious that I knew people wouldn't be able to contain their smiles around him. I knew I couldn't.

"It's not that I'm cynical or anything," I opened up. I felt completely comfortable around him, like I could say anything I wanted to, "but I just cannot make myself believe in love at first sight. It just doesn't seem…real to me. People can't just see each other and fall in love without knowing anything at all about the other person. That just doesn't happen."

Seth contemplated what I said for a moment before replying. "I guess what you're saying makes sense on paper, but love doesn't make always sense sometimes. It doesn't always go by the rules. For some people it's just there, like Sam and Emily. Sam knew the moment he saw her that she was the one. It could be like that for Ava and Embry, who knows."

I shrugged my shoulders and gave up my case. Seth was very passionate about what he said. I could tell that he hadn't just randomly blurted this out. He had thought about it before. I didn't say anything else on the subject because my argument had been floored by his. I couldn't think of anything to say back.

Seth and I walked a long time on the beach just talking about our lives and random things that popped into our heads. He was so easy to talk to, and I found myself telling him things that I had never told anyone, not Ava, not my mom, not Ethan. I had never felt so comfortable talking to anyone before, and he was a very good listener.

"When my dad died--" He started, but I interrupted him.

"Your dad died?" I questioned as we stopped and sat down in the sand as the tide came in. I would have never known, but I guess you couldn't just look at people and say 'hey, that person's dad died.'

"Yeah, about three years ago. It was really sudden," He explained. He looked a little said and I put my hand on his warm back. It felt natural for it to be there. "He had a heart attack."

"I lost my dad, too," I breathed. We had a lot more in common than I thought we would.

"How did he die?" Seth asked, looking more pained than before.

"He didn't die. He left my mom, my brother, and me when I was six. I haven't seen him in ten years," I looked out into the ocean. It was dark and I couldn't really see anything, but I knew what was there. "No postcard, no birthday or Christmas presents, no phone calls for the past ten years. It's like he dropped off the face of the earth."

"I'm sorry," I looked into Seth's brown eyes and I knew that he sincerely meant it. He felt my pain.

"I'm sorry about your dad, too," I told him. He took my hand and neither of us said anything else.

Like everything with Seth, this felt so natural, like I was born to hold hands with him and talk to him and be with him. I couldn't explain it.

* * *

Okay, just so no one is confused, Embry did not imprint on Ava.

Now, go review for the sake of my sanity.


	3. Night of the Living Zombie Murder 4

Here is chapter 3. My updates are going to look a little less frequent within the next two weeks because I will be out of town with no computer (it sucks, I know). I will try my hardest to update as soon as I possibly can. Another thing, I want to ask you guys a question. Please answer in a review or whatever:

_**Who do you think should play Seth Clearwater in the Eclipse movie?**_

Tyler Posey (from Maid in Manhattan and Brothers & Sisters) is my first choice. He has some Native American in him, and I think he is absolutely gorgeous. I also really like Luke Pasqualino (from the UK TV show Skins! which is an amazing show by the way. You should definitely watch it), but he is Italian. I think he could definitely pull it off, though.

I don't own anything...unfortunately. I wish I owned Seth, he is so precious.

Vi

* * *

I had two days till my audition for the summer intensive at the Joffrey Ballet. Only two freaking days until I had my big audition. This scary fact was starting to stress me out just a little bit, and by a little bit, I mean a lot. Madame Levine reassured me over and over again that I would be fine as long as I didn't go into the audition and let my nerves get too good of a hold on me, but my brain kept telling me otherwise. I felt like I was going to take a test that I hadn't studied for. For a ballerina, stage fright was odd. I longed for the stage, to be a great ballerina. Dancing was such an intimate thing for me, when people criticized my dancing, I always felt like they were criticizing me personally.

The audition was going to be held at a small studio in Seattle that had offered their practice area as a stage for the auditions. I had never been there before, but Ava had and she told me that it was very similar to our studio which made me feel slightly better. I would just try to pretend that I was dancing in our studio for pure enjoyment, not under pressure in some foreign place for a bunch of judges. My audition time was at 2:30 in the afternoon, which was at an ideal time for me. At least I had that to my advantage. I had chosen to do the Gamzatti variation from _La Bayadere_ for my audition. It was one of my favorites, after all, and I knew it very well. It also made me feel better to perform something that I was relatively familiar with rather than something I had just learned. I hoped that this would enable me to get through the audition.

"Embry was so cute and nice," Ava sighed dreamily. Ever since we had gotten back from the bonfire in La Push, all Ava could talk about was Embry. Embry this, Embry that, it was kind of getting annoying, but I knew how she felt. All I could think about was Seth, even though I didn't talk about him like she talked about Embry. "We really connected, you know."

"So I've heard," We were at the nail salon getting pedicures, something we did together a lot before big auditions. It really helped us calm down and kept us from having major panic attacks, not to mention our feet were in bad shape since we were ballerinas. Currently, a nice lady was painting my toenails a hot, fire engine red.

"Sorry, Caroline. I don't mean to talk about him all the time," She said sheepishly and smiled apologetically. I forgave her; I could understand what she was feeling, after all. "I can't help it. It was just so great. You know how I feel, right?"

I had only told her minor details about my walk with Seth on the beach, just about us holding hands and me feeling so comfortable around him. Our conversation had been so personal that I felt like it was wrong to share all we had talked about with Ava. Besides, I couldn't talk about certain things with her, even though she was my best friend, specifically things about my father that I could talk about with Seth, who understood because he had experienced something similar. I couldn't blame her-- she would never really understand that no matter how hard she tried because she had never been through a situation like that. Seth understood me like no one else did, not even Ethan or my mom. It was nice to have someone to talk to about things that I had always kept bottled up.

"Just don't get hurt," I warned her. She had a habit of falling for the type of guys that were not really the good sort. She always gushed over them for weeks and then, eventually, usually in a matter of four weeks, they would disappoint her and she would be upset and mope for a week or two. The process would then repeat itself.

"Embry would never hurt me," She said defensively. It wasn't that I thought he would hurt Ava, not intentionally at least, but she had high standards. Most of the time, it was her standards that ended up making her feelings get hurt.

"Are you going to see him soon?" I changed the subject. I could tell she really liked him, more than she had liked any other guy she had dated.

"Tomorrow night," She confirmed, still emerged in the latest issue of Cosmo she was reading. "We are going to see that new horror movie at the theater downtown."

"Ava, you hate horror movies," I said weirdly. Ava never watched horror movies. Whenever someone suggested watching one, she flat out refused.

"I know," She cackled mischievously, throwing her long blonde hair behind her shoulders. "That's why we are going to see one."

"You are one evil girl," I shook my head and chuckled slightly. That sounded like something Ava would do. "Poor Embry. He doesn't know what you have in store for him."

"Hey, I have an idea," She looked up from her magazine. "How about we make it a double date? You and Seth can come along! It will be fun. Besides, I don't want to be too serious on my first date with Embry."

I thought over it for a minute. I would love to see Seth again. I hadn't seen him since the bonfire, although he had texted me a number of times since then. Seeing Seth again sounded very good, but I wasn't a big fan of horror movies. I was a big scardey cat. I knew I would not be able to sit through that gory chainsaw movie Ava wanted to see even if Seth was there.

"Well, I do want to see Seth, but little old me can't take a movie like that," I told her.

"Oh, whatever," She laughed. "That's why we are going with two big, strong guys. You don't actually have to watch the movie; just pretend like you are watching and hang onto Seth like there's no tomorrow. He will love it, and believe me, so will you."

I considered it for another moment. I guessed I could deal with one scary movie for an opportunity to see Seth. "Alright, I'm in, but under one condition."

"Okay, what is it?" She asked curiously.

"You have to help me find something to wear. I'm desperate," I pleaded with her. She always knew what to wear while I was always freaking out and running around to find something.

* * *

"You look great, Caroline; don't worry," Ava reassured me as we drove to the movie theater in her car. She picked out some dark, denim cuff shorts with a navy blue halter top and a pair of black sandals for me. I actually liked what she had chosen for me. It was a nice outfit that I would never have put together myself. "I'm pretty sure that even if you wore a burlap sack that Seth would still think you were the most beautiful girl he has ever seen."

I blushed crimson. The thought of Seth calling me beautiful popped in my head and I was hoping that he would tell me I was. "Thanks, Ava. You know I'm hopeless when it comes to fashion."

"I know," She laughed. "I would never let you get ready all by yourself. Who knows what you would walk out wearing."

I laughed, too. What she said didn't offend me because I knew it was true. I knew I was horrible at putting together outfits and basically anything that had to do with fashion and looking good. Thank God I had my mom and Ava, otherwise I would look horrific. They were both my fashion guides. Whenever I didn't know what to wear, I always looked to what they were wearing to go by. "Embry won't be able to keep his eyes off of you when he sees what you're wearing, maybe his hands, too."

"That's what I was going for, Sweetheart," We both took the chance to giggle like little school girls. Ava was looking beautiful, of course. She was wearing a pair of impossibly tight black skinny jeans and pink square-neck tunic. She looked amazing, and it was obvious that she had put a lot of effort into looking good for Embry. She had even curled her long golden hair into perfect little ringlets that bounced while she walked. It was ungodly how pretty she looked next to me.

I spent the rest of the short ride to the movie theater contemplating what exactly I had gotten myself into tonight. Horror movies weren't my thing, that's for sure, and Ava had said I would be able to ignore the movie but I wasn't completely sure if I would be able to or not. Seeing someone being hacked to bits by a crazed murderer carrying a chainsaw was like a train wreck. Sometimes you just can't look away. I hoped that Seth would be enough distraction for me not to freak out during the movie.

Ava parked her car in the parking lot. It was rather crowded since it was a Friday night and we did live in Port Angeles. There were very few choices if you wanted to do something in Port Angeles. Those consisted of bowling, hanging out at the mall, and going to see a movie. Other than those, people just hung out in parking lots and such, but most people flocked to the movie theater.

"So what is the name of this movie we are going to see?" I asked, breathing deeply.

"Uh, Night of the Living Zombie Murderer 4, I think," She said casually. I gulped. That didn't sound very good at all. I was thinking about running away when Ava spotted them. "Oh, look, there's Embry and Seth."

I think Ava had a hint that I was thinking about running because she grabbed me harshly by the arm and drug me over to where Seth and Embry were waiting for us. They stood, looking completely gorgeous, by an unused bench in a somewhat secluded spot. Seth was grinning like crazy, and his smile was as huge as ever.

"Hey," He greeted me affectionately, and gave me a long hug. I held onto him a little longer than socially acceptable, but he didn't seem to mind too much. It was a little chilly and his unnaturally warm body made me feel like a flame was travelling through my very core; I wasn't sure if it was a good feeling or not.

"Hey, Seth," Ava greeted him after I did. She shot me a look when she was sure he wasn't looking. It was her 'play-hard-to-get-don't-be-a-slut' look. I had seen that look plenty of times. Through the years I had known Ava, she had tried to teach me everything she knew about boys, but I was basically hopeless. I had picked up a few things, but the one thing I had never really figured out was something called subtlety, according to Ava.

After we had exchanged proper greetings, we headed into the theater to find a seat. Seth and Embry had already bought our tickets, much to my chagrin and Ava's happiness. I didn't like the idea of relying on someone to buy the ticket for me. It was _my _ticket, anyways. I offered to pay Seth back for the money he spent, but he didn't say anything at all, he just laughed. Did that mean we were on a date? Ava had called it a double date, but was that what Seth thought it was? My mind was working so hard that it was confusing me. I was almost ready to shoot myself by the time we had found seats in the packed theater. Apparently _Night of the Living Zombie Murderer 4 _was a very popular choice tonight.

Ava had found us seats near the back of the theater, but not in the way back where the all the couples went to make out. Even she was better than that. I was sitting directly in between Ava and Seth, and for two reasons that made me very happy. Firstly, Ava could always help me with Seth; she was an expert on boys, after all, and, secondly, the more important reason of the two, I was scared out of my mind and sitting on the inside made me feel a little bit safer.

"Are you okay?" Seth had noticed my jumpiness. The movie hadn't even started yet, and I was already freaking out. I didn't know how Ava was handling this so calmly. The last time we had seen a scary movie together she had started crying less than an hour into it because she was so scared.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I lied. I had never been a great liar and Seth saw straight through my facade. I decided to tell him the truth. "Okay, I don't really like scary movies. They freak me out."

He laughed gloriously. "I had a feeling that was what's the matter. If you don't like them, then why did you come see it? We could have always gone to see something else."

"Ava dragged me into this," I spit out. He looked a little hurt, and I quickly rephrased my sentence. "I mean that she dragged me to see this movie. I would have preferred to see something a little bit…happier."

The lights went dim after I said it, and I could feel chills running up my spine. I wasn't sure if it was the anticipation for the movie to start or the fact that I was so close to Seth. His fingers were lightly grazing my hand on the arm rest. I wasn't sure if it was intentional or not.

"Are you sure you're up to this?" He asked. I could tell he was amused by the situation, but he was trying to be polite and not laugh about it. I just nodded my head bravely and turned away from him.

Twenty minutes later, I thought I was going to throw up. I had just watched some creepy zombie guy dismember this human guy that gotten in the zombie's way. It was getting to be too much for me to handle. Ava, on the other hand, was having the time of her life cuddling up to Embry. Every time the zombies came on screen, she gave a little shriek and buried herself further and further into his shoulder. Embry was taking the movie like a man. It didn't even seem to faze him. Like his friend, Seth wasn't bother by the movie at all. In fact, he actually laughed during some parts, specifically times where people were ripped to pieces by the slow-moving zombies. I was just sitting there, cowering in my seat, too horrified to even move.

"Do you want to get out of here?" Seth asked me during the middle of the movie. It was pretty obvious I was not enjoying myself.

I didn't hesitate to answer. "Yes," I grabbed his hand and towed his six-foot frame out of the movie theater behind me.

"I thought you were going to hurl," He chuckled slightly as we exited the building. "Your face was all green."

I gave him a death glare.

"What?" He asked. "I just saved you from that says you want to kill me? I think I deserve better than that, Caroline."

"Oh, Seth, you are my knight in shining armor who rescued me from that horrible movie that could have possibly killed me. How will I ever repay you?" Sarcasm dripped from my voice.

"You can go get some ice cream with me for starters," He suggested.

"I guess I can endure that," I smiled. I loved ice cream, and I knew exactly the place to take Seth.

I led him farther towards the docks where most of the tourist attractions were, like the carnival that was up sometimes and the dock where you could go on boat tours of the harbor. There were more shops and restaurants, but there was a really cool '50's style ice cream parlor that I went to sometimes when I just needed to be by myself. It was never very crowded because there was a Ben and Jerry's around the corner, and people seemed to prefer the convenience of it.

"Hey, Caroline," The waitress, Sally, greeted me as we walked in. It was horrible, but I had been here so many times, people actually knew me by name.

Sally, our waitress, was the owner's wife who waited tables in her free time because it kept her from sitting at home and doing nothing. Plus, it gave really good tips. She was someone I could talk to about my problems when I was having a hard day because she didn't know all the intimate details. She could just give me her unbiased opinion. She led Seth and I to a table and then took our orders. "So, what will it be?"

"The usual," I told her, and by usual I meant a two scoop bowl of Cookies and Cream. I could tell Seth was smirking at me from across the table without even looking up.

"I'll have the same thing she's having," He ordered. I raised my eyebrow at him.

Sally walked away with our orders. "You're having the same thing I'm having? How do you know I didn't order something gross?"

"What type of ice cream is really gross?" He did have a point. Ice cream was delicious, and it was my really big weakness. I had a huge sweet tooth. "Do you come here often?"

"What makes you say that?" I asked.

"Seeing as the staff knows you by name and you have a usual, it kind of seems like it," He pointed out.

"I guess I do," I sighed. "My older brother took me to this place a lot when he lived at home. He's in college in Seattle now so we don't come as much anymore."

Seth looked around with his brown eyes, inspecting the place. "It is nice. I could see why you like it here. It's very…you."

"What does that mean?" He was so confusing sometimes, but all guys were. Couldn't they just come straight out and say what they were thinking?

"I can just see you here," He had this glazed over, far off look in his warm, coffee colored eyes. "I can see you sitting here in this booth just doing whatever, talking to that waitress, doing your homework."

I didn't have time to reply before Sally came out and brought out our two bowls of double scooped ice cream and sat them down before us. She placed two spoons and some napkins on the table. "So, who are you, kid?"

"I'm Seth," He said cordially. I was surprised Sally had stopped to have a conversation with him. It had taken her a while to warm up to me.

"It's nice to meet you," She smiled. She was a nice old lady of about 60. If my grandmother was still alive, I would picture her just like Sally. "You know, you're the first person Caroline has ever brought around here besides her brother. I was beginning to think she didn't have any friends at all."

I rolled my eyes. "That is not true, Sally."

"Yes, it is," Sally retorted. For a 60 year old, she had a lot of spunk in her. "It's always you and Ethan or just you. No one else ever comes."

"Okay, so maybe I haven't brought anyone here before," I thought about it for a moment. She was right. It had always been a thing for Ethan and I to come and the past year I had visited by myself. I had never brought any of my other friends over here.

A customer wandered in from the street and Sally moseyed over to seat them. Seth was looking at me thoughtfully. I couldn't help but stare at him, too. A dark piece of silky hair floated down to his forehead and before I could stop myself, I had reached out and moved it. I quickly removed my hand after I realized what I had done; I was sure that my cheeks were deep crimson.

"I'm the only person you've ever brought here?" I knew he was going to ask me about that. "Why?"

"I don't know," I shrugged my shoulders. The truth was that I didn't know. I just had brought him here. "I just, I feel safe around you. You understand me."

Seth smiled that gorgeous smile of his and I felt the corners of my lips moving upwards involuntarily. "I know how you feel. I haven't talked about my dad with anyone, not even my mom or Leah. Last week at the beach, it all just came out so easily. You understand me like no one else does. Not Embry or Quil or anyone else."

I felt Seth's warm hand on mine where it rested on the table beside my uneaten, melting ice cream. An electric current ran through my body and I wondered if it would that way every time he touched me. I certainly hoped so.

When we finished eating our ice cream, Seth and I walked back towards the main part of time. I knew that our time together was close to being over, but I didn't want it to be. I wanted our night to last forever, just the two of us walking and talking together, doing whatever we felt like doing.

"Where did you two wonder off to?" Embry asked once we met up with him and Ava outside the movie theater. I could tell the movie had gotten to her a little bit because she was holding onto Embry tightly. She wasn't a prude, but Ava had very strict rules when it came to dating. She normally didn't even let a guy hold her hand on the first date. They would have to prove themselves worthy.

"Oh, no where really," Seth answered for us. I was glad that he had chosen to keep the ice cream parlor our little secret. I didn't want Ava to feel hurt that I had never taken her there before. Embry, being a guy, believed Seth's lie easily. Ava probably would have caught it if she weren't so wrapped up around Embry. She looked in awe of him. His long arm was wrapped around her waist.

"Ready to go home?" I asked her. It was getting late and I did have an audition the next morning in Seattle. I didn't want to be completely dead in my audition.

Ava sighed dreamily and slowly untangled herself from Embry's well-toned arms. "I guess."

She said her last good-byes to her date while Seth pulled me away from them for a minute to a more secluded spot. It wasn't very private, but it was not in the middle of the sidewalk. "Good luck tomorrow. I know you'll do great."

"Thanks," Just knowing that he was rooting for me made me feel all the more confident. "We'll hang out soon, right?"

"Of course we will," He said assuredly and wrapped his strong arm around my shoulders. "Emily and Kim have been dying to see you again. They have been bugging me all week about when you are going to come back down and see us in La Push."

"That's sweet of them," Emily and Kim had been really welcoming at a party where I knew basically no one. I could see myself being friends with them even though we were very different people.

"They really liked you," He replied softly. For some reason, I had a feeling we weren't talking about Emily and Kim anymore.

"I really liked them, too," I said just as quietly. I definitely wasn't talking about them now. It was almost comical how fast I found myself falling for Seth Clearwater. I had only known him for a matter of weeks, but like he had said, love doesn't always play by the rules. All my life I had grown up thinking that love was square, that it would just fizzle away one day, but Seth made me think about it very differently. Seth made love sound like some sort of fairytale, one that could actually come true.

Seth leaned in towards me slowly, his beautiful face closing the gap between us slightly. I could feel his hot breath upon my skin and it felt like fire, a good fire that made me all warm and toasty inside not one that burned me. I leaned up towards him and willed him to kiss me. My eyelids fluttered closed. I could feel his lips hovering hotly over mine, inches away and I urged him silently to continue.

"Caroline, come on! Get in the car," Ava honked the horn and nearly scared me half to death. I jumped about ten feet away from Seth, who looked like he could kill. I scurried in the car, and was about to chew Ava out for interrupting my important moment with Seth when she held up her hand to signal for me to be quiet. "What have I told you over and over and over again? Have you not learned a single thing from me? Never kiss a guy on the first date!"

As we pulled away from where Seth remained after Ava had disrupted our would-be kiss, I looked out the back window. He still stood in the same spot only Embry had come up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. They were both staring after us driving off.

* * *

Review, Review, Review....

You get the picture.


	4. Crazy People

Yay, Chapter 4 is here. Thanks so much to my reviewers, you guys are awesome. I really love this chapter, it's probably one of my favorites that I have written so far.

Another thing, one of the reviewers asked why I didn't have Embry imprint on Ava and that is because I thought it was a little bit too cheesy. I did have him imprint on her when I was first planning this story, but I just think it works out better this way and everything. Ava is probably my favorite character to write because she is most like me, so don't worry, she will have some major parts in the story.

So, please, please, please review for me and I will love you all!

Vi

SM owns all.

* * *

"Caroline Jones?" A middle aged woman dressed in dark clothing called my name. I looked up at her from where I was sitting in the lobby of the small studio. "The judges are ready for you now."

I breathed deeply as I walked into the small studio where the three judges sat in chairs near the back of the room. My heart was threatening to jump out of my chest; it was beating so hard and fast, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. This was it. This was my moment to shine. The music started and I let it take hold of me. What happened next was just natural. My body was so used to dancing this variation that I didn't even have to think about it. I just concentrated on wowing the judges. When I had finished, one of the three judges was actually clapping for me. I took that as a good sign.

"So, how was it?" Ava practically jumped on me when I walked out of the studio. She, of course, had come with me for moral support, and I was grateful to have her there. My mother hadn't been able to come because she had work, and Ethan had always hated coming to these types of things with me.

"It went great," I smiled slightly. I was still in shock that it had gone off without a hitch. My heart was still beating hard and I was breathing heavily from all of the physical exertion. "One of the judges even clapped for me afterwards."

"That's great," She hugged me, screeching in excitement. "That means you are in for sure. Just think of it, Caro. The Joffrey Ballet! My best friend is going to the Joffrey Ballet Summer Intensive."

I laughed happily and freely. Now that the audition was over, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my chest. I didn't have to worry about it anymore, I just had to wait for the results. "You make it sound like I just got into the company or something."

"Who knows? Maybe one day you will be in the company," I rolled my eyes. That would probably never happen. The Joffrey Ballet Company was one of the best in the world and it was hard to think about me ever dancing with them, but a girl could dream, right? "Come on, let's go shopping. We'll get something really cute, my treat."

Ava took me to the mall in Seattle where we had a girls' day that included getting Starbucks (you can find one around every corner in Seattle, not kidding), shopping for clothes and shoes (Ava ended up buying me a pair of super cute pink sandals), and eating tons and tons of food. We always had a girls' day every once in a while and we had been long overdue for another one, but with so much going on lately, Ava and I hadn't spent so much time together within the past few weeks.

"It's good to do things like this every so often," Ava said as she gulped down her second iced caramel macchiato from Starbucks, where we were now sitting and relaxing. I craved ice cream; Ava had a big thing for coffee. "We have to get away from all those boys."

I knew she was saying that, but it wasn't what she meant. Ava had confessed to me on our way to my house after the movies that she thought she was falling for Embry. "What about Embry?"

"What about him?" She said that, but the moment I said his name a starry-eyed look came into her eyes and her voice sounded strangely far off.

"You've got it bad," I laughed. Ava had never fallen for a guy like she had fallen for Embry. It had always been the other way around. Guys tended to flock to Ava like ducks to water. I think some of the reason Ava liked him so much was because he wasn't chasing her like every other guy had.

"You've got it bad, too," She snapped out of her Embry-induced trance. She was right, but I would never admit it. All I could think about was the next time I would see Seth again and I had only seen him last night. "I saw you with Seth last night. You were going to kiss him."

"I would have if you hadn't interrupted us," I muttered. I was still a little miffed that she had interrupted us. All night I had dreamed about what it would have been like to kiss Seth.

"Caroline, what have I told you?" She reprimanded me. "Never kiss—"

"A guy on the first date," I finished for her. She had told me this many, many times before.

"It's for your own good," She patted my hand sweetly. "We don't want him to think he can take advantage of you."

I sighed. At this point, I didn't really care if Seth took advantage of me. I just wanted to be around him more and more, maybe more than I should. "So do you have any more plans with Embry?"

"Not yet, but I imagine he will be calling within the next day or two. I don't want to call him," Ava told me. One of her other important dating rules was that she would never call a guy, no matter what. She always waited for the guy to call her, and if he didn't, he obviously wasn't worth her time. "Have you heard from Seth?"

"Yeah," I blushed. "He called me this morning to tell me good luck."

Ava squealed at this information. I felt my heart go all gushy when I thought about it. He was so sweet and thoughtful. I had never met a guy like him. Most of the guys I knew were only interested in one thing, and they were never genuinely nice to me like Seth was. I could tell that his intentions were sincere when I looked in his eyes. As cheesy as it sounded, I knew deep down that he would never hurt me, not intentionally at least.

"Do you two have any plans soon?" She asked, chewing on a bite of delicious blueberry muffin.

"Seth did mention that Kim and Emily were dying to see me again last night," I told her. "He said that I could come over whenever I wanted to."

"Wow," Ava gasped, nearly choking on her muffin. "He must really like you."

"I hope so," I sighed. I was nearly as bad as her, if not worse. "I've never felt this way before. It's kind of confusing."

"Oh, Caroline, I've been waiting for this moment since the moment we became friends," Ava said dramatically. I rolled my eyes as she grabbed my hand and tried to make the moment special for who knows what reason. "I think you are falling in love."

Was I falling in love with Seth? I knew that I liked Seth, a lot, too, but did I love him like Ava said I did? I was so confused and I had an awful lot of thinking to do before I saw Seth again.

* * *

"Caroline!" Emily ran up to me as I entered the small house she shared with her fiancé, Sam Uley, one of the guys I had met at the bonfire. Seth had called me a few days after my audition and invited me to dinner at Emily and Sam's house. I had graciously accepted and drove down to La Push that evening.

"Emily," I laughed as she hugged me tightly. She acted like we were old friends even though we had only met once. "It's good to see you."

"You, too," She smiled. It was easy to forget about the scars that marred her face when she smiled. "We were wondering when you were going to come back down here. Kim and I are practically the only girls and it's so great to have new people here."

I laughed as well. I was going to reply, but was stopped when Seth sprinted up to me and pulled me into a huge bear hug. I giggled and he pulled away from me, but he didn't let go completely.

"What was that giggle for?" He asked, smiling his big, goofy grin. His dark hair was hanging in his face. He wore a light t-shirt and jean shorts, very casual, but it looked great on him. I was so close to him that I could feel his hard muscles through his clothing.

"You act like you haven't seen me in years," I smiled, too. It had been almost a week since I had last seen Seth and that was far too long in my opinion. If I had it my way, I would see Seth every single moment of every single day.

"It feels like it," He replied softly. I could hear groans from the small living room where some of the guys were sitting.

"Seth, it has only been four days," I was trying to act calm, but inside I was thrilled that he was as excited to see me as I was to see him.

"Four days that seemed like forever," He told me, joking with me, but part of me knew that he was serious. It had seemed like forever since I had seen him last.

"Enough of that," Kim came up to the two of us, her long, dark hair hanging in a braid down her back. "It's time to share Caroline with the rest of us, Seth."

Kim dragged me into the living room where the rest of the guys in Seth's group of friends were. Most of them I had met before or recognized from the bonfire, including Quil and Embry, but there was one guy sitting in the corner by himself who I had never seen before. He was huge and strong-looking, just like the other guys, but he had this strange sort of presence around him. It was like he demanded attention even though he wasn't doing anything.

"Oh, Caroline, this is Jacob," Kim introduced me to the guy. He acknowledged me slightly, but, generally, he didn't look happy to be there. I wondered what was wrong with him as Kim proceeded to introduce me to the rest of the people I didn't know.

"Do you want to go outside?" Seth asked me after all of the introductions had been made. We were sitting together on the couch in the living room and I could feel the warmth radiating off his body. I had still been thinking about this Jacob guy. He didn't talk to anyone, but it wasn't that everyone ignored him. It was more of a self-imposed seclusion.

"Sure," He grabbed my hand and led me outside onto the quaint front porch of Sam and Emily's house. It was small, but very homey. I felt comfortable there.

"Don't worry about Jake," Seth told me. He could read me very well. "He is just always in a bad mood these days."

"Why?" I asked curiously.

"Uh, no one really knows," Seth told me, but I could tell he was lying. He clearly didn't want to talk about it with me so I wasn't going to press him on the topic. When he felt like telling me, he would. "How did your audition go, by the way?" I hadn't gotten around to telling him the results yet.

"They called two days ago and told me I was in," I said happily. I was a little upset that it would cut down my time with Seth during the summer, but I would only be gone for two weeks. Hopefully, those two weeks would fly by quickly.

"That's great," He smiled widely, shaking his hair out of his eyes.

"Thanks," I smiled, too. He was so nice. I didn't want to leave him. "I leave at the third week of July."

Seth didn't respond, he just turned and looked out into the yard. The night was really clear, a strange feat for the rainy town of La Push. It was usually raining fifty percent of the time, and if it wasn't raining, it was about to rain, but tonight it was different. The weather was perfect for a summer night.

"Caroline," Seth looked at me and he sounded a little nervous. "Have you ever heard any of the Quileute legends?"

"A couple when I was younger. Why?" Why would Seth be nervous about asking me whether or not I had heard any of the legends? I couldn't make sense of it.

"Did you ever hear about the cold ones?" The two words—_cold ones—_made a chill run down my spine. I didn't like the sound of it.

"No," I told him. I had only heard the more famous ones and I didn't remember them well. My teacher in elementary school had told us a few during history class, but I had never thought they were important. They were just legends, not actual facts.

"Our tribe—the old legends suggest that we descended from wolves. That's why we aren't allowed to hunt or kill them to this day," Seth explained to me. I still didn't understand what he was getting at with all this legend stuff. "Then there are the legends about the cold ones."

"The cold ones? What are they?" I was intrigued by his stories, but there was something creepy about them. They words 'cold ones' just gave off a bad vibe to me.

Seth ignored my question. "The legends about the cold ones are nearly as old as the ones about our tribe descending from wolves who turned into men, or werewolves as they're called now, and, according to legend, the werewolves only have one enemy—the cold ones."

"That's weird," I didn't hide my distaste for this strange story telling time. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Just let me finish," Seth took my hand in his and rubbed circles on the exposed skin with his thumb. "So, these cold ones are the traditional enemies of our tribe. There have even been stories about them recently. Apparently, some of them came around about seventy-five years ago, while my great-grandfather was alive. But these ones were different than the others. They weren't supposed to be dangerous. So they made a treaty with them. The cold ones promised to stay away from us and the tribal elders promised not to expose them for what they really were to your people."

"Dangerous? What are the cold ones?"

"There was always a risk for the cold ones to be around people. Even though these were supposed to be different than the rest of them, they still were dangerous."

"How were they dangerous, Seth?" I didn't like the sound of his voice. The edge to it sounded menacing. That was a tone I had never expected to hear from Seth.

"They said that they didn't hunt humans, that they preyed on animals instead."

"So what exactly are they? The cold ones?" I asked. I hadn't figured it out.

"Bloodsuckers," He spat out. "You would call them vampires."

Before I could respond, Emily had stuck her head out the door and told us dinner was ready. We went inside and all of the boys were already devouring platefuls of food. I had lost my appetite after the story Seth had told me. I was still trying to understand why he had told it to me. It wasn't like any of the old legends were true; everyone knew that. They were just old stories that people invented when they got bored. That's why they were called legends.

"So, Seth tells me that you're a ballerina," Kim made conversation with me as I helped her clean up in the kitchen. She and Emily had both insisted that I didn't need to, but I felt bad for not helping.

"Oh, yeah, I've been dancing for twelve years," I was a little distracted and I was sure she could tell. "Kim, what's up with these legends about the cold ones?"

Kim dropped a plate that she was washing on the floor when I asked her the question. It didn't break, but it had chipped just a little bit. She seemed a little jumpy at the mention of the legends. "Um, nothing. Why'd you ask?"

"Seth was telling me about them earlier, before dinner," I told her. I didn't know Kim very well so I couldn't tell for sure if she was lying or not, but her jumpiness made her seem like she was.

"He did?" She was honestly surprised. "Did he tell you everything?"

"I don't know. He just told me that the tribe supposedly descended from werewolves and that these 'cold ones' or whatever were their enemies. There was something about a treaty, too."

"Listen, Caroline," Kim put down the plate she was washing in the sink and she turned to me. She looked around the kitchen to make sure no one else was in there to hear our conversation. "You need to talk about this with Seth. It really isn't my story to tell."

After I had finished cleaning up with Emily and Kim, we moved into the living room where all the guys were playing video games and talking. I looked at the clock and it was ten o'clock and I knew I had to get going soon. I had an hour long drive back to Port Angeles, but I was not going to leave until I had figured out what this whole deal was about the cold ones.

"Seth, what was all that before dinner?" I asked him as he walked me out to my car. It was dark outside and the woods looked strangely scary. This talk about the cold ones had put me a little on edge.

"It was nothing," He avoided my eyes.

"Don't give me that crap. I know something was up," I told him. He ran a hand through his dark brown hair and sighed.

"Okay, what I'm about to tell you might freak you out, but…"

"Just get it out and tell me," I demanded to know what was really going on. It was obvious that everyone, even Kim and Emily, were in on some big secret around here.

"The legends…they're real," Seth rushed out quickly. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before continuing. "The cold ones, the vampires, they were here and the treaty is real. They moved back here about around six years ago."

"You're telling me that a bunch of vampires live around here somewhere?" What had I gotten myself into? He was a crazy person. I thought I had finally found a good guy worth dating only to learn that he needed to be locked up in a padded cell somewhere. Of course, something like that would happen to me.

"I know it sounds crazy, really I do," He pleaded with me to understand him, but I just couldn't believe it. Vampires weren't real. They were just fictional monsters that someone made up to scare people. "And besides, they don't live here anymore. They used to live in Forks, but they moved about three years ago."

Forks was a dinky little town about thirty minutes from La Push. I had only been there once or twice and I never really liked it. Why, if they even existed, would a bunch of vampires choose to live there? I was too speechless to say anything else.

"There's more," Seth cringed when he said. I could tell my reaction was hurting him, but I couldn't help it. "You know how I said we're descended from wolves? Well, it turns out that's true, too."

Now I was sure he needed to be locked up in the loony bin. First, vampires and now werewolves? This was too crazy to be true. "Okay, I think it might be time for me to leave."

"No, Caroline, let me explain," Seth seemed so intent to explain the situation to me that I stayed. It couldn't hurt to hear what he had to say. If it was really crazy, I could just run away and never come back. "We all thought that they legends were a bunch of crap, too, up until a couple of years ago. Sam was the first one of us to transform, and he had no idea what was happening. He disappeared for two weeks before anyone found him, scared to death. He had no idea what he had become.

When the elders, like Billy Black, Jacob's dad, and my dad, saw him they knew that the legends were true. It was their grandfathers who had been the last generation to turn into wolves. You see, when vampires are around, it sets off this gene in our kind, at least those of us that are descendants of the last generation. That's how the transformation begins. Over the next few months, we all began changing. That's why we are so big, why our skin is so hot."

I had no idea of what to say to him. Part of me believed him, a very small part of me that wanted to believe Seth just because he was Seth and I really like him, but another larger part of me told my brain that Seth was crazy and so was everyone else around here and that I needed to run away before anything horrible happened to me.

"Please say something," Seth looked like he was in pain and I didn't like it. Why did I have to care about him so much?

"What do you want me to say?" I looked at him. "Okay?"

"I know that this is very shocking and that you've had this thrown at you all at once—"

"I honestly don't know whether to believe you or not," I told him truthfully. I looked him straight in the eye.

Seth grabbed my shoulders gently and looked down into my eyes. "Caroline, I promise you that I'm not lying. I'm really not. It's so hard for me to tell you this because I'm afraid that if I say the wrong thing you're going to run away from me screaming. I'm telling you the truth. Please, you have to believe me."

I looked into Seth's warm eyes and I knew he wasn't lying. It was just so…mind blowing to think that things like werewolves and vampires existed. I still wasn't sure if I fully comprehended it or not. Seth was telling me that he thought I would be scared and run away from him, but I knew that even though he had just told me he was a werewolf that I would never be able to run away from him. "So, werewolf, huh? Is it anything like the movies?"

Seth laughed, but it sounded more like he was relieved more than he thought what I said was funny. "No, nothing at all. We don't have to have a full moon to change, or phase as we call it, and we don't bite people, in case you're worried."

"That's cool," I was taking this strangely. I think it was because I still didn't understand the full effects of what I had just been told. The guy I liked had just told me he was a werewolf and I was sitting there talking calmly with him. Maybe I was just as crazy as he was.

"Cool? Wow, Caroline, I just told you that vampires and werewolves existed. Don't you have any questions?" He laughed at me. We leaned against my car. I had a feeling I wasn't leaving anytime soon.

"A couple. So, these vampires, who were they? Did I know them?" I asked. What if they were some people I had known? Had I known other vampires before I knew them?

"You know the Cullen family?" Seth asked me and I shook my head no. "Dr. Cullen worked at the hospital in Forks, strange, I know, but he had really good control apparently, and he had a wife named Esme. They had some kids, too: Edward, Alice, Jasper, Emmett, and Rosalie. They all went to Forks High School."

"Why did they leave town?" I had never met the Cullens or even heard of them.

"Do you remember Bella Swan?" I nodded yes. Bella Swan was a girl that had died in a car accident about three years ago. They had found her car driven off the side of a bridge in the river. Everyone knew about it because her father was the police chief in Forks. It had been big news three years ago.

"Wait a minute," I put the pieces together in my head. "Did they have something to do with Bella Swan's death?"

"I don't think I explained this earlier, but the cold ones that my great-grandfather made the treaty with were the Cullens. They lived in Forks a long time ago, and they came back later. Bella moved to Forks two years after they did and she had some weird relationship thing with Edward, the youngest son, and about six months after she came, she just disappeared. Her father said that she had been in a car accident on her way home to Phoenix and that she had just ran off the road, but her body was never found. We knew better than to believe that."

"They killed her?" I was horrified. Bella Swan had a relationship with a vampire? What kind of sane person would have a relationship with a vampire that could kill you? She had to have been out of her right mind.

"It's against the rules of the treaty for any of the Cullens to bite any humans and they never had all the years they lived here, but Edward Cullen was in love with Bella Swan and they turned her into a vampire which clearly violated the treaty," Seth told me. I was sure that the look on my face was one of pure horror. "Of course we don't know any of this for sure, but it all adds up. A few weeks after Bella disappeared, the Cullens left town. The guys have been really worked up about it ever since then. A bunch of them thought that we should have gone after them."

"Why didn't you? They broke the treaty."

"We didn't have any proof," He replied. "It's just as probable that her body washed downstream and that the Cullens left because they had been here too long and didn't want anyone to get suspicious since they don't age."

"They don't age?" I was amazed, yet terrified by all this vampire stuff.

"They don't age," Seth confirmed. "We don't either. Well, not until we learn how to control our phasing. Once we do, we continue to grow. That's why all of us don't look our ages. It's because physically we're all like twenty-five."

"Wow," Now that I thought about it, I couldn't believe I had ever thought Seth was normal. He was abnormally hot, a regular person would have been dead if they were that hot. He was also super strong, and not like regular super strong, he was an un-human type of strong. "Is there anything else you have to tell me about?"

"Well, there actually is something," Seth seemed more nervous now than he did before.

"What is it now? Are Kim and Emily witches or something?" I joked, trying to make light of the situation, but it wasn't working. Seth was still on edge.

"In fact, it does have something to do with Emily and Kim," He told me. "Have you ever heard of something called imprinting?"

"Like that things that animals do when they see their mothers?" Seth was so confusing. Half of the time, I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Kind of. It's like this thing that we wolves do," He nodded. "It's sort of like love at first sight, but not really. It's like when we see that person we're supposed to be with forever, we just know. We're made to be with that person. Once you meet the person that you imprint on, it's like they're the only reason you're here. They are your whole life."

"Have you imprinted?" I was sure that he had. Why would he have to tell me about it if he hadn't? My heart sunk. Seth was already in love with another girl that he was supposed to be with forever. I could not compete with that on any level. There went any chance I ever had with him.

"Yeah, I have," He moved closer towards me and I had no idea what he was doing.

"On who?" I asked, trying to sound casual about it. Was it wrong that I didn't care so much about Seth being a werewolf as I did about him being in love with some other girl? Probably, yes. Maybe I was just as messed up as Bella Swan was.

"On you," He kissed me suddenly. Yes, he _kissed_ me. Seth Clearwater leaned down and kissed me full on the lips.

And what did I do?

I fainted, of course.

* * *

"Shh," I heard a loud voice shush someone. "I think she's coming around."

"God, Seth, what did you do to her?" Another voice laughed and then I heard a loud slapping noise and a cry of pain.

A third voice laughed. "He's quite the charmer, isn't he?"

"Embry, will you just shut up?" The one voice I loved so much said. Seth sounded distressed and I hoped it wasn't because of me. I did not like making him upset. I just wanted him to smile and be happy all the time.

"Caroline, can you hear me?" Emily's kind voice pulled me out of the darkness. My eyes slowly fluttered open and I looked around. I was laying on the couch in Sam and Emily's living room and all of the La Push guys, along with Emily, Kim, and even the anti-social Leah, were crowded around me.

"What happened?" I said groggily, rubbing my eyes. I sat up on the couch.

"You fainted," Seth came up and kneeled beside me. Then it all came rushing back to me. Seth. Werewolves. Cold Ones. Imprinting. Kiss.

"We'll leave you two alone," Emily pulled Sam and everyone else out of the living room. Some walked straight out, but others like Embry and Quil wanted to stick around for the show. Seth gave them both a death glare and they laughed and slowly walked out.

"So," I said awkwardly. What are you supposed to say when someone professes that you are their soul mate? "Imprinting, huh?"

"Just so you know, you have a choice in the whole thing," Seth sounded a little pathetic. He was looking sadder than I had ever seen him, and he was starring down at his hands like they were the most interesting things in the world. "You can do whatever you want, Caroline. If you want to date other guys, date other guys. If you don't want to see me or talk to me ever again, tell me and I'll leave you alone. Just tell me what you want and I'll do it."

"I want you to kiss me again."

"What?" He looked up at me, surprised. His mouth was wide open.

"Seth, I don't want to date anyone else, and I definitely don't want you to leave me alone and never talk to me again," I took his large hand in my small one. "I know that we've only known each other for weeks, but I feel like I'm supposed to be with you. I honestly don't think I could be without you even if I wanted to be."

"I love you, Caroline," His eyes burned with intensity as he looked into mine. "I know that you may not love me right now, but I'm here. I always will be."

"You're right," I told him. Happiness was bubbling over inside of me. "I'm not sure if I love you or not now, but I know that I don't want to be without you. I know that I want to spend every second of every day with you. It's sad, but it is true."

"I know how you feel," Seth smiled and he rested his forehead on mine. The moment his skin touched mine, an electric shock went through my whole body.

"So what does this make us?" I was confused again. Seth had just admitted to me that we were meant to be together forever. Did that mean we were going to get married one day?

"We're whatever you want us to be," He told me softly. I could definitely see myself being with Seth forever. He was perfect for me, he really was.

"Right now, I'm happy just being with you," I kissed Seth, and this time I didn't pass out.

Kissing Seth was something I could do all day every day. His lips were soft and warm, and I could feel every emotion Seth was feeling when he was kissing me. Seth kissed me softly at first, running his fingers down my neck gently and making me shiver, but things heated up and before I knew it, his hands were winding their way in my hair and his lips were traveling down my jaw line. When we broke apart, we were both breathing heavily. Neither of us said anything. We didn't want to ruin the moment.

I stayed at Kim's house that because it had gotten too late for me to drive home safely. I had wanted to stay by Seth all night, but I realized that I couldn't really. We were both tired and we needed sleep. I would see him the next morning, anyways.

"So, Jared imprinted on you?" I asked Kim as we got ready for bed. She had loaned me a pair of pajamas and some clothes for the next day.

Kim nodded. "I had known Jared forever. We've both lived on the reservation all our lives, but he never really gave me the time of day. I sat by him in one of my classes our junior year of high school and he never even talked to me. I had the biggest crush on him, and, all of a sudden, he was missing from school for a few days and then when he came back, he noticed me. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Sam imprinted on Emily, too."

"Are the three of us the only imprints?" That was why I had bonded so easily with the two of them. We did have a lot in common when it came to boys.

"No, we aren't," She said reluctantly. "Don't freak out, but Quil…he imprinted on Claire."

"Claire?" I nearly screamed. Claire was five years old while Quil was nineteen. That was just gross. It made me want to call the police and report him.

"It's not like that. Right now, Quil is just like a big brother to Claire. He doesn't have any feelings for her like that," Kim explained. It made it sound better, but it was still kind of weird. "Besides Claire, you, Emily, and I are the only ones. It's nice to have another girl here. There are just so many boys around."

"I really like it around here," I did. There was just something about it that made it feel like home. I was safe in La Push. I was safe with Seth.

* * *

Chapter 4!


	5. Girl's Night Gone Bad

Here is chapter five, guys. In this chapter, we actually start getting into the story line I have planned out and soon (within the next five chapters), the Cullens will come back into the picture. I'm not telling how, but they will. My updates will be quite frequant the next couple of weeks because I already have through chapter nine written, they just have to be proof-read and have the final touches put on them.

It's great to have feedback from my reviewers, and I also like to know what you guys think of the things going on the Twilight world: such as what you think of _New Moon: The Movie, _how you think Chris Weitz is doing as a director, and what you think of Breaking Dawn. I would really like it if along with review, you dropped some information that you wanted to share. It doesn't have to be about the things I mentioned earlier, but I don't have a lot of friends that are into Twilight so it's nice to have some feedback from people who are.

Vi908

Stephenie Meyer owns everything that you recognize. I own Caroline, Ava, etc.

* * *

Summer was flying by so quickly, half of it flew by right in front of my eyes. It was the beginning of August now and so much had happened in the past two months. I had met Seth, began falling in love with him, got accepted to the Joffrey Ballet Summer Intensive, found out the guy I was falling in love with was a werewolf, found out the guy I was falling in love with not only loved me back, but we were supposed to be together forever, and I had just spent two weeks in Chicago for the Joffrey Ballet Summer Intensive. Those were only the high points of it; there were lots of other little things I had done. This was definitely the best summer of my life by far. Other summers, I had just spent my time laying around and doing nothing. Occasionally, I would get out and do something fun with my friends, but nothing interesting had really ever happened to me, not like this summer.

Currently, I was walking through the small airport in Port Angeles on my way back from Chicago. I was really excited to see Seth. The two weeks without him had been extremely tough. I had never missed anyone as much as I missed him during those two weeks, not even my mother or my older brother, Ethan. Ever since I found out about him being a werewolf, we were nearly inseparable. We spent time together almost every day down in La Push. Really, I had loved my two weeks in Chicago, the intensive was a great opportunity and I had met a lot of people that would be able to help me in the ballet world, but I couldn't imagine being away from Seth much longer. The night before I left for home, I could not even sleep because I was so ready to see him.

"Seth!" I dropped my carry-on bags in the middle of the airport and jumped into his open arms. There he was waiting for me in the terminal by himself, looking as gorgeous as ever. His dark hair was hanging down like it usually did and his eyes were warm and brown; I could even tell that from a distance. He was almost too beautiful to be true. I was so excited to see him. Seeing Seth after two weeks was like finding water after wondering in the desert forever.

"Oh, I missed you so much," He buried his head into my hair and I kissed his tan cheek lightly. It really had felt like two years, not two weeks, since I had seen him. "Never, ever leave me again, promise?"

"I promise," I smiled and kissed him again, on the lips this time. "I don't think I can live without you much longer than that. I was practically going crazy the past few days. I never thought the trip was going to be over so I could see you again."

Chicago had been great, even better than great. I met so many new people and made lots of friends during the classes I had taken during the intensive. It had been a lot of hard work, but it had also been fun. Being in Chicago by myself was a lively experience, too, but I had missed Port Angeles and, more importantly, La Push. The entire time I was in Chicago, a day didn't go by that I didn't think of La Push and all the people that I loved that were there. I was pathetic, I really was, but I had gotten to the point where I had stopped caring about how fast I had gotten attached to Seth, Kim, Emily, and all the other people there.

"Tell me about it," He sighed and ran one of his overly large hands smoothly through my long dark hair. "I've been stuck in La Push with everyone and their imprints and all I could think about was you. It was horrible. I've been counting down the hours till you got home."

"Well, I'm not leaving you again anytime soon so you don't have to worry," I told him as we walked back to grab the bags I had dropped in the middle of the terminal. "You are just going to have to get sick of me because I'm planning on being around a lot."

"I don't think I could ever get sick of you, Caroline," He replied as he took my bags for me. That was the great thing about having a super strong boyfriend (yes, boyfriend. Seth and I were officially together.), he could always carry the bags for you. We moved towards the baggage claim where we found my luggage. Seth carried that, too, and it didn't look like it bothered him one bit. "Kim has been missing you, too."

Over the past two months, Kim had quickly become one of my best friends. Emily was nice too, but Kim was closer to my age. It was nice to talk to her because she could relate to me. We were both imprints and we had more in common than I had originally thought. I couldn't talk about werewolf stuff with Ava because she wasn't part of the pack or an imprint, so it was nice to have Kim around. We had a lot of fun together. She and Seth had even taken me cliff-diving, a scary yet fun experience at the same time.

_flashback_

"_Just jump," Kim called out to me from where she was in the water. I could barely hear her and she looked like a tiny little speck from where I stood. All I could see of her was her russet colored skin and her dark, inky hair floating out behind her. "You'll be fine."_

"_Come on," Seth was down there, too. I was the chicken who had decided to go last and I was really regretting it. Why hadn't I just jumped with Kim when she offered? _

"_I think I'll just stay up here, guys," I looked down over the edge of the cliff. It was high, very high and even though I wasn't scared of heights, I wasn't a big fan of them either. Jumping off of a cliff into the ocean didn't sound like a lot of fun to me._

"_Oh, no you don't," Seth swam towards the beach with astonishing speed and raced back up the side of the rocky cliff with the grace and fluidity of a professional mountain climber. I watched him the whole time in amazement. He reached me at the very top and grabbed my hand. "Okay, I'll jump with you on the count of three…"_

"_No, Seth," I said firmly and glared at him. There was no way I was going to throw myself off the cliff and into the water. They had to think that I was crazy to do something like that._

"_One…"_

_I shot him another look and pleaded with him not to do it. I knew that if I didn't jump willingly that he would pull me in with him._

"_Two…" Seth smirked at me._

"_Oh, what the hell," I held on tightly to his hand. I was going in either way so I might as well make the best of it._

"_Three!" Seth and I plummeted towards the water at full speed and I was sure that miles away people could hear my shrieks._

_The water was cold, not freezing, but cold. Then again, it was the Olympic Peninsula and it was always cold. Seth held onto my hand the entire time, never letting go. When we hit the water, he pulled me back up to the surface._

"_How was it?" Kim was right there, too. _

_It hadn't been that bad. In fact, I wanted to do it again. "I'll race you to the top."_

_flashback_

"I missed her a lot, too. I got her these really great shoes in Chicago that I just know she'll love. I can't wait to give them to her," I gushed to him as we walked out to the old car, Jacob's VW Rabbit, that Jacob had so kindly let him borrow. Seth didn't have a car, and he really didn't have the need for one either. He normally just walked everywhere, and everywhere he had to go was usually in La Push so there wasn't much of a walk.

"Are you coming over to Emily's house this afternoon?" He questioned me as we loaded my luggage into the trunk. Emily had invited me to come to a little get together at her and Sam's house that afternoon, but I had politely declined.

"I really want to, I do, but I promised Ava that I would hang out with her tonight. She's going to spend the night at my house," I explained to him apologetically. He looked a little down, but he covered it up with a smile quickly. "She has been kind of down since—well, you know. I feel bad that I've sort of deserted through all of this."

It was horrible, what had happened, and I felt so awful that it had to happen to my best friend. Ava had been very happy dating Embry Call. In fact, she was absolutely crazy about him and he seemed to really like her, too. Seth and I, as well as Embry, knew that it was a bad idea, however, because sooner or later Embry would imprint on some other girl and break poor Ava's heart. He hadn't meant to. He really didn't want to hurt Ava, but it had happened about a week before I left for Chicago. Embry had met some girl at the grocery store while he was picking up food for Emily and he imprinted on her. That meant that he couldn't be with Ava anymore, which completely destroyed her. Of course Ava thought that he had just left her for some random girl. I couldn't tell her that he hadn't meant to and that the girl he had met was his soul mate. She would never be able to know. Ava had been crushed and she told me that she would never love anyone ever again. I told her she was being a bit over dramatic and that she would move on one day. She didn't believe me.

"Yeah, I understand," He looked a little disappointed, but he covered it up quickly. "But you'll come down tomorrow, won't you?"

"Of course I will."

Seth drove me to my house and helped me get my suitcases out of the car. I didn't have to carry a single bag. It made me feel a little bad, and when I told Seth that he laughed and said that it wasn't heavy at all, even though I knew I would never be able to carry all that stuff myself. It was extremely heavy. Those are the perks of having a werewolf as a boyfriend, I guess.

"Caroline, I'm so glad you're home," My mom hugged me the moment I walked in the door. "I've missed you."

"It's good to be home," I hugged her back. My mom had always been very affectionate with me. I had never once doubted that she loved me. I couldn't imagine that her life had been easy. She had married the love of her life only to be abandoned by him and left with two young kids, but she always looked on the bright side of things. I wished that was a trait that I myself possessed.

"Seth, it's good to see you, too," My mom really liked Seth. I had been afraid that she wouldn't like him when I invited him to dinner at our house one night at the beginning of July, but she thought he was perfect for me. Ethan, on the other hand, was not a big fan of my boyfriend, but I suspected that was because Seth was the only boy I had ever brought home and my brother was the over-protective type. I was sure that he would warm up to Seth eventually. Seth didn't think that, though. He said it was something about being a brother that I couldn't understand.

"You, too, Ms. Jones," Seth acknowledged her. She had insisted he call her Phoebe, but he said it just made him feel weird so he just stuck to Ms. Jones.

I had met Seth's mom and sister, too, and needless to say, I absolutely love his mother. Sue Clearwater was possibly one of the strongest women I had ever met, besides my own mother, and I was extremely in awe of her and all of the things she had done since her husband's death a few years ago. Seth's sister, Leah, was a little more social to me now that there weren't so many people around. She was a little too sarcastic for my taste, but she was nice to me because we had a common bond: we both cared for Seth. Seth and Leah had a great relationship, just like Ethan and me.

"Hey, squirt," Ethan emerged from his bedroom and scooped me up into a big hug. "It's good to have you home again. The house has been so quiet without you. How was Chicago?"

"It was amazing," I gushed and recounted tales of my visit to the windy city to my older brother and my mom. "But I did miss Port Angeles. Chicago is just too crowded and busy for me. I don't think I could ever live there."

"That's good to hear. There are so many crazy people in that city," Ethan mussed up my hair before he turned to acknowledge Seth. "Good to see you, Sean."

"Ethan," I glared at my brother. "It's Seth."

"Oh, right," He replied unapologetically and went back into his room to watch some more TV. "Seth."

Seth just nodded at Ethan and carried all of my things into my room and sat them down beside my bed. He understood since he had a sister, too. I had been upset at the way my brother had treated my new boyfriend at first, but Seth didn't make a big deal out of it. He had told me that it was okay and that he knew exactly where Ethan was coming from.

"I just got you back and now I have to leave you," He whined and put his arms around me. I snuggled into his warm embrace. I didn't want him to leave, but I knew he had to. Sam Uley would be missing him down in La Push, along with the rest of the pack.

"I'll see you soon," I reassured him. I knew how he felt. We had only been together for less than an hour after being apart for two weeks and we had to be separated again. Part of me wanted to say screw Ava and go with Seth to Emily's house, but I knew that just wouldn't be right. "Tell Kimmy and everyone else that I miss them and that I'll more than likely come down tomorrow after ballet class."

"I will," With that, he pecked me on the lips and left. I suddenly felt strangely alone.

I unpacked my suitcases while I waited for Ava to come over. We were just going to hang out at my house tonight, not do anything big. I set the adorable shoes I got for Kim out beside my bed with a necklace that I knew Ava would like. I would have to wrap them before I gave them to my friends.

After I messily wrapped my gifts, I changed into a pair of comfortable sweatpants and an old t-shirt. Ava was just coming over and I didn't really have to impress her.

The doorbell rang. "Hey, Ava! I missed you."

"I missed you, too," My best friend hugged me. She looked depressed. Ava had always prided herself in looking good everywhere she went. Even when we stayed in for movie nights and stuff like that, she always worn matching pajamas and cute little slippers. Tonight, she was dressed just like me. That was my first clue that something was wrong.

I handed her the present I had bought her while I was in Chicago. It was nothing expensive, but I knew she would like it.

"It's gorgeous," She held up the golden necklace to inspect it more closely. On as simple gold chain was a pendant with two Pointe shoes together. It was understated, but I knew she would like it since she loved ballet so much.

"I knew you would love it," I said matter-of-factly. She put the necklace back in its box and put it in the zipper compartment of her overnight bag.

"How was the Joffrey?" Ava asked after we had settled down in my living room. She was trying to act like she was fine, like she wasn't hurting, but I could see right through her. We had been best friends for twelve years after all, and in those twelve years, I had learned how to read her like a book.

"It was fine," I replied. I was worried about her. The fact that she was still so torn up over Embry was unhealthy. It was so unlike her to sit around and mope for days at a time. "Ava, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Why?" We were sitting in my living room in our pajamas pigging out on cheese pizza and watching one of our favorite chick flicks, _Now and Then_. She was staying the night with me.

"You just aren't acting like yourself," I told her, picking up another piece of pizza. The best approach to Ava was to act like it wasn't a big deal. If I started freaking out on her, she would clam up and not tell me anything. "You know, you can tell me anything. I'm here for you."

"It's just this whole Embry thing," She sighed and threw down the slice of pizza she was nibbling on. "I'm so confused. One day, we were so happy and I truly thought I had found the right guy, like how you found Seth, and then the next day he was breaking up with me. What happened, Caroline? What did I do wrong?"

By then, she had started crying and I pulled her to me and hugged her. "Sweetheart, you did nothing wrong. If he makes you cry, he is obviously not worth your time."

"This is so weird," She cried even harder and I wondered what I had said to make her feel worse. "I'm supposed to be the one giving you advice about boys, not the other way around."

"Whoa, you're right," I was shocked I had even said something that intelligent about relationships. I had never had much experience with them, and the little experience I did have, wasn't good. It showed how much Seth had been changing me in the past two months. "Stop crying, please. You're going to make me cry, too."

Ava dried up her tears and put on a brave face. "I know this is going to sound strange, but you are absolutely right. He isn't worth my time."

"That's my girl," We smiled and laughed and went back to watching our movie.

We didn't talk much during the rest of the movie and I knew Ava was still a little upset, but I had a feeling that she wasn't going to die because of this whole ordeal. I knew she would pull through sooner or later. She was a fighter.

"Why can't real life be like the movies?" Ava sighed as the credits rolled at the end of the movie and a song played happily in the background. "Why aren't there always happily ever afters?"

"Because life would be really boring if everything always ended the way we wanted it to," Apparently, Ava was now figuring out what I had learned years ago: life isn't perfect, no matter how much you want it to be. Things don't always end the way you want them to, no matter how hard you wish they would. I had learned that lesson when my dad left. Ava found out about it when Embry broke up with her. "Hey, lets go to Blockbuster and get some more sappy movies to watch. I have a feeling we are going to be up all night."

I grabbed my keys and my wallet off the night table in my bedroom and Ava and I hopped in my car and drove to our nearest Blockbuster where we proceeded to rent the sappiest movies known to man. They included but were not limited to _Titanic, A Walk to Remember, _and _The Notebook_. While we were out, we also grabbed a gallon of vanilla bean ice cream and a big thing of chocolate syrup. I had a feeling I was going to weigh a lot more the next morning.

When we got home we watched some of the movies we had rented, but for our last movie of the night we chose to watch _Casablanca. _Ava and I were huge fans of the classic film. We both had a mutual love for Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. We had seen the movie so many times that we could actually quote almost the whole thing. It was probably my favorite movie of all time.

"And you never will. But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that," Ava quoted some famous lines from the end of the movie where Ilsa has to leave Rick, a man that she loves, alone so she can escape from Casablanca and to a better life with her husband, Victor. I was practically in tears by this part in the movie. _Casablanca _always made me cry even though I had seen it over a thousand times.

"Here's looking at you kid," I stated the last part of it. It was just a beautiful movie, really.

As the end credits rolled down the screen, I wiped the tears off my face and looked at Ava, who had also been crying during the movie. _Casablanca _was just an emotional movie. If it didn't tug on your heartstrings, you must not have a heart.

"See what I mean?" She blubbered, gesturing to the screen. "Why can't real life be like that? Why can't I find my Rick?"

"Personally, I don't want my life to be like Ilsa's. Can't you find a better movie you want your life to be like?" I laughed. Ilsa had gotten herself into some tough situations. I preferred to stay out of harm's way and be with the person I loved. I wasn't much of a self-sacrificing type of person.

"That's true. How about _Roman Holiday_? Now, that is a great movie. I would take Gregory Peck--" Ava stopped in the middle of her sentence. Then, she turned her head like she was listening to something. "Caroline, is your phone ringing?"

I jumped up and went into my room, where I had sat my phone on the dresser. Sure enough, it was ringing loudly and I just hadn't heard it over the noise of the movie, but when I was about to answer it, the caller hung up. I flipped my phone open to see that I had seven missed calls from Seth. He had told me that he was going to call me, but I hadn't expected him to call me seven times.

I dialed his cell phone number quickly and on the first ring, he picked up. "Hey, what's up?"

"Are you okay?" I heard his frantic voice on the other line. Something sounded wrong, really wrong.

"Yeah, what's going on?" I asked him, confused. "Is something the matter? You sound upset."

"I've been out of my mind, I was so worried," He was breathing heavily on the other line, ranting a little bit. What had gotten him so worked up? "Why didn't you answer any of my calls or call me back?"

"Sorry, Ava and I have been watching movies all night and I didn't have my phone with me," I explained the situation to him. "What is wrong, Seth? I know something is wrong."

"I think you and Ava should come down to La Push tonight. I'm going to send Collin to come pick you up," He was trying hard to avoid my questions; it was obvious. I could hear talking on the other line and it sound like someone was crying. It wasn't Seth, but someone was definitely crying in the background. "Be ready in about thirty minutes."

"Why?" I wondered. What had happened to make Seth so upset? I needed to know.

"It's Kim," He whispered. I didn't like the way he said that. It sounded wrong. A shiver ran through my body, and I had a bad feeling in my stomach.

"What about her?" My voice was now as frantic as his was. What had happened to Kim? Had she been hurt? Was she okay? Horrible situations were running through my head.

"We were being so careless," He whispered quietly, his voice had this haunted tone to it. Seth was berating himself over something I didn't know about. I could hardly understand what this had to do with Kim. "We thought that things were safe, that there was nothing going on, but…it just happened. _Oh, god,_ _Jared_…You have to come down here, Caroline. I need to know that you're okay. Please, just come down here tonight."

"What do I need to tell my mom?" I couldn't just run out of my house in the middle of the night and not tell my mom anything at all, and I couldn't exactly tell her I was going to be with Seth. She would never let me go if I told her that.

"I don't know, uh, just tell here there's been an accident and you need to come down here as soon as possible," Seth made up a poor excuse. "Just leave her a note. I want you down here as soon as possible."

"What is happening?" I was still completely in the dark. I wasn't sure if a hundred percent sure if Seth was still avoiding the topic or if he just hadn't gotten around to telling me what was going on, but I knew that for the sake of my nerves and my sanity I needed to know what was going on soon.

"Kim," Seth sighed pathetically. I could hear the raw emotion in his voice. He was mostly talking to himself. "What have we done?"

I had to know if Kim was alright. A bunch of ghastly thoughts were still running through my head. "Where is Kim, Seth? Where is she?"

"Kim is dead."

* * *

Dun dun dun! Did anyone see that coming? Review me!


	6. The Aftermath

I had actually planned on waiting a few more days before I put this chapter up, but I couldn't wait. Thank you so much to my wonderful reviewers and I'm really glad that none of you saw the plot twist at the end of last chapter! It was really hard for me to get rid of Kim because I really love her character so much, but it had to be done.

Thanks so much to those of you who commented about BD and the upcoming movie and I really share most of your sentiments. To me, Breaking Dawn was just so different from the rest of the Twilight series. What attracted me to Twilight in the first place was the simplicity of it, which was completely lost in the last book. I am more of a classics reader so Twilight was a refreshing read for me, and I after I read Twilight I just HAD to read New Moon and Eclipse. I was so excited about BD coming out and I was one of the first people to buy it at Books-A-Million. However, when I read it, I was less than amused. I'm not going to call it horrible trash because not every single part was bad, but in my opinion, it was not a good book. I liked being able to see into Jacob's mind a little bit and the last couple of pages of the book where Edward can finally read Bella's mine were great. Other than that, I didn't like it at all. It had just changed too much from the original book. It kind of felt like fanfiction.

Twilight the movie was okay, but I feel like New Moon is going to be ten times better! The teaser trailer looks AWESOME and I think Chris Weitz really understands the books a little more than Catherine Hardwick did.

Enough of my rambling, lets get on with the story.

Vi908

SM owns everything.

* * *

The entire car ride to La Push was uncomfortably and unbearably silent. Like Seth had said, Collin and Brady, Seth's friends and members of the pack that I didn't know very well, came and met Ava and I at my house. From there, we made the almost hour long trek to La Push. Neither Collin nor Brady said much and we didn't either. In fact, I hadn't even told Ava what had happened and why were going to La Push in the middle of the night. I couldn't make myself admit that Kim…

When the car pulled up to Sam and Emily's small house in La Push, I was thanking God that the awkward car ride was finally over. The tension between Brady, Collin, Ava, and me was so thick it could have been cut with a butter knife. I was just ready to see Seth, and he was waiting for me out on the porch as we arrived.

Seth ambushed me the moment we got out of the car. He grabbed me up into his long arms and held me there for a lengthy amount of time. I didn't mind at all. Honestly, I was scared out of my mind and I felt safer when I was with him. He, like everyone else I had encountered, didn't say anything to me either. People were being very quiet lately. I didn't like the silence.

"What is going on?" Ava whispered to me. I could tell Ava felt very out of the loop. She knew that something horrible had happened, but no one had gotten around to telling her. I just couldn't bring myself to tell her the real reason we were in La Push during the middle of the night.

"Lets just go inside first," Seth scanned the area. I looked out into the trees as well and a chill ran down my spine. The last time I had seen them, they had looked inviting and safe, but now I couldn't help but think about what lurked out there in the woods.

Everyone was crowded inside Emily and Sam's home. Their house was like an official meeting spot every time something happened or when people just wanted to go hang out they went to Sam and Emily's, but there were two people noticeably missing tonight: Kim and Jared. There were others that weren't there as well, but the presences of Kim and Jared were observably gone. Without them, the room felt oddly empty to me.

Ava yawned quietly and Emily took that as her chance to pull her out of the room. Whatever we had to talk about had to do with something about the pack, and there was no way Ava could know about that. "Ava, I know you must be tired. Why don't you go lie down in our guest room?"

Ava went without a fight, but as she walked to the guest bedroom, she looked back at me like she expected me to tell her the whole story later. I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to so I would have to make up something good. I hated all this lying, but I knew I had no other choice but to lie.

"What happened?" I asked Seth the minute she was out of earshot.

"It was a bloodsucker," He spat out venomously. I had never seen Seth like he was in that moment. He was just full of rage and pent up sadness. "We haven't had many vampires around since the Cullens left, just one or two every so often, and needless to say we were slacking off on patrols….We all feel so horrible…It was too late to do anything when we found her. There was nothing we could do."

"You mean..," Kim had been killed by a _vampire_. A freaking vampire. I was so scared I was practically shaking. What was to keep that vampire from coming after me next? Kim had lived in La Push, a place I had previously thought was safe, and she still hadn't been able to get away from the danger. Seth just bowed his head. "How is Jared holding up?"

"Jared hasn't talked to any of us," Seth told me. I had been told multiple times that it would be extreme pain for a wolf to lose the person he had imprinted on. I could only imagine the pain Jared was going through. He had loved Kim so much. "He phased and none of us have seen him since. A little while ago, Sam sent Jacob and Paul after him to make sure he didn't do anything stupid and irrational, but I would completely understand if he did. I keep thinking about what I would do if that had been you instead of Kim. I think I would kill myself."

"Don't say that," I put my hand on his warm cheek. I didn't want to think about Seth killing himself. "Seth, Jared needs his family, his brothers right now. He needs all of you."

"God, Caroline, I don't want to lose you," He buried his face in my neck and squeezed me harder than I expected. Unlike me, the realization of Kim's death had already sunk in for him.

"I'm not going anywhere," I looked into his eyes. I cupped his beautiful face in my hands. "I promise you that."

"That's what we thought about Kim, too," His brown eyes held so much sadness and I just wanted to take it all away. I realized that I would rather die than see Seth in that much pain anymore. It was agonizing.

"Seth, I know that you aren't going to let anything hurt me. I'm not leaving you."

He didn't say anything more. He just held me in his arms a little while longer. When I pulled away from him, I observed the room full of people. Embry was there with the girl he had imprinted on, Sara. Both of them were sitting on the couch as still as stone. Embry was looking out the open window while Sara looked terrified. She was pretty and blonde. Actually, she reminded me a little bit of Ava. I could see where Embry would do well with her. I had only met her once but she seemed nice. She, like me, had just been dragged into this strange new world of werewolves and vampires, but I had a little more time to adjust before something like this had happened. That poor girl must have been scared out of her mind.

Quil was there, too. He was sitting in the corner with Brady talking about who knows what. Emily had come back into the room and she took a seat by Sam, who looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. I could tell by just looking at him that he, like Seth, held himself personally responsible for Kim's death. He was the leader of the pack, after all.

"We saw a female leech," Jacob rushed into the house, half clothed. I had learned a lot earlier that the boys liked walking around with barely any clothes on because it was a lot easier when they phased. "She got away, but Paul and I managed to get a good look at her."

Everyone's ears perked up at the news and little whispers went through out the room. Even though Kim wasn't alive anymore, maybe we could get revenge on the vampire who had killed her, for closure. Sam spoke up. "Where?"

"A little ways off the rez," Jacob replied. "I don't think she'll be coming back to La Push anytime soon. It looked like she was headed for Forks."

"Was it one of the Cullens?" Sam asked his friend. If it was the Cullens, then there would be more than enough reasons to attack.

"No, it was a redhead. We'd never seen her before. From what we saw, she was by herself," Jacob explained the situation. "And it seems as if she has some sort of talent for getting away. Kind of like how that one little Cullen girl could see into the future."

Sam beat his fist down in the air. "What about Jared? Where is he?"

"Paul and I finally got him to come back, but he didn't talk to either of us and he went straight back to his house," Jacob reported.

The house went completely silent. Everyone was imagining the pain Jared must be feeling over the loss of Kim, especially the guys who had imprinted. Seth was hanging on to me like there was no tomorrow while Embry and Sam were both looking cautiously at the girls they had imprinted on every few seconds. I was finally realizing that Kim was gone, that I was never going to see her again. We were never going to go cliff diving again and I could never give her the gorgeous shoes I had bought for her in Chicago. How could this have happened to Kim? Why her? Why not me or someone else?

Seth and I walked outside by ourselves. The house was getting rather crowded and I was starting to feel claustrophobic, like I couldn't breathe. I didn't feel completely comfortable there, out in the middle of the woods, but I knew Seth wouldn't let anyone or anything hurt me. He stuck close to my side, not touching me, but close enough for me to feel the heat radiating off of his russet colored skin. "Please don't cry, Caroline. It kills me."

"I'm sorry," Tears had started rolling down my face. He pulled me closer to his warm body and I sobbed into his shoulder. A wet spot on his t-shirt appeared, caused by my tears. "I just can't believe Kimmy is gone. I just talked to her on the phone yesterday."

"I know," Seth soothingly rubbed circles on my back. "I just saw her this afternoon. I never thought anything like this would happen. Nobody did."

There really wasn't much else I could say, and I had run out of words on the subject. I softly yawned and Seth noticed. It had been a very long day. It was hard to believe that I had just gotten back from Chicago only hours earlier.

"Are you tired?" Even during a horrible time like this, Seth was still as attentive as ever. "Do you want to go to sleep?"

"I'm a little bit tired," I lied. I knew he would feel bad for keeping me up if I told him I was exhausted and I couldn't stand to see him upset anymore. He had already been through so much.

"You can stay at my house. I know I'll feel much better about your safety if you're near me," We walked the short distance to Seth's house. All the lights in the house were off so I assumed his mother, Sue, was asleep. Leah had been at the meeting earlier and I wasn't sure if she was coming home or not. We had left before she had.

"Are you sure your mother won't mind?" I asked as he led me to his room. I was a little nervous. I had never spent the night in a guy's room before. It seemed very asinine for me to be uneasy about spending the night in Seth's room at a time like this, but I couldn't help myself.

"No, she won't," Seth assured me as he grabbed a white fleece blanket from the hall closet closest to his room. "She'll feel better that you're here with me to protect you. She really likes you, you know."

"I really like her, too. She reminds me a lot of my mother," I told him as we walked into his room. "She's a lot like you."

He smiled slightly for the first time that night.

Seth's room was very typical for a teenage guy. It was messy, but it wasn't a complete pigsty. I knew for a fact that Sue Clearwater would not put up with her only son living like a pig. He had a full bed with blue sheets up against the far wall and there were two windows. It was nice, but nothing special. I imagined that was exactly how Seth wanted it to be.

Seth handed me the extra blanket he held in his hands. "I'll sleep on the couch, and you can sleep in my bed."

"You're just going to leave me in here alone?" My sense of panic was kicking in. I didn't want to be alone right now. I was too terrified that the vampire who had killed Kim would come back and get me.

"Nothing is going to hurt you," He put his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. "I promise you that as long as I'm around, nothing will ever hurt you."

"Then don't leave me," I sat down on the bed and cleared off a space for him beside me.

He debated with himself mentally. "I don't know, Caroline…"

"Please," It wasn't very nice of me to beg for him like I was because I knew he wouldn't be able to resist, but I needed him with me.

He gave in without much of a fight. Seth laid down beside me, and I could tell he was trying to be gentlemanly about the whole ordeal. I covered both of us up with the large blanket that he had given me and I snuggled closer towards him. Earlier, I had been worried about spending the night with him, but now I didn't care so much. I just wanted to feel Seth beside me and know that I was safe.

* * *

Sleeping next to Seth was like sleeping in a sauna. His naturally warm body temperature kept me steaming hot all throughout the night and I had to kick the blankets off of me at some point. When I woke up the next morning, I felt like I was about to have a heat stroke. I somehow managed to pry Seth's arms away from me and sat up in his bed. He stirred when I moved away from him.

"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty," He said sleepily, pushing the hair of out my face as I looked down at him on the bed. Even in the morning, he looked god-like. I probably looked like Godzilla.

"Morning," I yawned and stretched my tired muscles.

"Did you sleep well?" He asked, rubbing my back for me.

"I had these awful dreams," I shuddered remembering the nightmares I had the night before. They were so terrifying that I was literally shaking just thinking about them.

"What were they about?"

"They were about vampires," I shivered when I said the word. They had been the worst nightmares I had ever had.

"Do you want to tell me about them?" He comfortingly held my hand and pulled me down to lay back beside him. I was hot, but I could get over that.

"Sure," I sighed. They were just dreams, and maybe by getting them off of my chest, I would be able to stop having them. "I was out in the woods by myself and I was so lost. I had absolutely no idea where I was and there was no one else around when I heard some shuffling in the trees. My heart was beating really fast and I started running and I could feel something chasing me. I was so scared…I thought I had finally gotten away when _it _jumped out at me. That was the last thing I remember."

Seth cradled me in his arms. I felt better now that I had told him, and he was there to hold me. "Caroline, you don't have to worry about anything."

"What about what happened to Kim? There is something to worry about, Seth," My voice was becoming frantic and it rose an octave as I spoke. "You can't be around me all the time."

"I've thought things over, and it's hard to admit this, it really is, but it was different with Kim," Seth sighed and got up from the bed. I followed suit. "We weren't expecting it. There haven't been many vampires around since the Cullens left, and we thought that the stray ones would stick closer to Seattle, but this whole thing with Kim was a wake up call. We are prepared now, as horrible as it sounds."

He did have a point. The pack had been very lax ever since the Cullen family had left, according to everyone. I just hated that Kim's death had to be the one factor that woke them up from their relaxed state.

"I wonder how Jared is," I pondered. He had to be doing badly. Kim was the love of his life and she had just been yanked away from him so suddenly.

"I imagine he isn't taking it too well. At least he came home, though. That's a sign," Seth ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit of his.

"Are you going to go see him?" I asked. Maybe seeing his friends would help him a little.

"Sam thinks it is best if we give him some space for now and let him grieve in peace," He explained to me. "He'll never get over this, never. The least we can hope for is that it won't ruin his life forever."

The bonds of imprinting ran deep. Jared, apparently, was taking Kim's death as well as could be expected, seeing as she was his soul mate that he had intended on spending the rest of his life with. It was only natural for him to be in pieces over his lost love. I could feel his pain as well. Kim had been a great friend to me over the past two months and I was going to miss her so much.

"What exactly happened, Seth?" I asked. I felt like I had to know. I wanted to know. Kim had been murdered and as one of her friends, I had to know what had happened to her.

"Are you sure you want to know?" I nodded. "All right, she had been at Emily's earlier in the afternoon with the rest of us, but she had to go home and pick up something from her house. She had left around three, saying something about a paper for one of her college psych classes that she was taking this summer in Olympia and how she would be back in about an hour. She kissed Jared good-bye and none of us knew that would be the last time we ever saw her alive.

"Kim had been gone for a while. It was so unlike her to be late and if she was going to be late, she would usually call. Jared called her cell phone and there was no answer. He called her house phone and there was no answer. None of us really thought anything of it. We just assumed maybe she had gotten really involved in the paper or she had fallen asleep and not heard the phone ringing, but Jared insisted that something wasn't right and so we went over to Kim's to check it out.

"You know how Kim lives out on the edge of the woods, right? That's why we didn't pick up the smell at first. It was so far away. None of us had been over there in a while, even Jared hadn't been there in a couple of days, but when we got to her house around seven, it was just Jared, Jacob, Paul, and me, and we knew that something was wrong immediately. That revolting stench was coming from all over the place. A vampire had been there.

"No one else was home; her parents were still out of town for their twenty-fifth anniversary. Jared took off upstairs into Kim's room, and I don't think I'll ever forget his horrified scream. It was horrible, Caroline. I wish I had never had to see that."

Seth's head was buried in his hands and I placed my arm around his back and leaned into him. I didn't want to think about the gruesome sight he had seen. "I'm so sorry…Poor Jared."

"That's the worst thing about it," Seth still wouldn't look at me. He kept his eyes locked on an unknown spot on his bedspread. "I keep thinking about what would have happened if that had been you instead of Kim or if you had been with her. I don't think I could take it if anything happened to you."

I didn't say anything. I just let Seth wrap his arms around me and hold me as long and as tight as he wanted. He was obviously hurting and I just wanted to make him feel better.

"What am I going to tell Ava?" I asked as Seth and I walked over to Emily and Sam's house that morning. I had almost completely forgotten about her because of my emotional night and morning.

"I'm not sure yet," Seth said. I rolled my eyes. He was loads of help. "Maybe Sam has come up with something."

"Well, he better have come up with something good," I snorted. "She's going to want to know why I dragged her all the way down here in the middle of the night and what happened to Kim, and I can't just tell her the truth."

When we arrived at the hangout for the pack, it was much less sullen than it had been the previous night, but it wasn't as warm and friendly as it normally was. People were talking again, but no one was really smiling. No one felt like smiling.

Ava sat uncomfortably in the corner, looking completely out of place. In the craziness of the night before, I hadn't thought about the consequences there would be for bringing Ava to La Push, namely having her around Embry and his imprint, Sara. She had just started to let go of him only to be thrust back into his world once more. Thankfully, I didn't see him around when I walked into the living room.

"You have a lot of explaining to do, missy," She confronted me as I walked over towards her. Seth had gone over to find Sam which left Ava and I by ourselves.

"I know, I know, but, please, not right now," I told her and she gave me a mad look. "I promise I'll tell you later, Ava, but just not right now. I can't."

Ava didn't say anything else on the subject. She could tell that something serious was going on and that she probably shouldn't bring it up.

"Sam needs to talk to us," Seth told me. He took me outside where Sam was waiting for us. It was the only place where we didn't have to worry about Ava overhearing our conversation.

"We are tracking the female leech. I have Jacob, Paul, Leah, and Embry after her now," The oldest member of the pack informed us. It wasn't a big surprise to me. "She is headed towards Forks right now, and we are sure that she has some others with her. How many, we aren't sure."

"Others?" A chill ran down my spine. That seemed to be happening to me a lot lately.

"Yes," Sam nodded morosely. "She seems to have made a few friends."

"And by made new friends you mean she created new friends," Seth read between the lines in Sam's story. The alpha of the pack acknowledged that he was correct.

I shivered again and Sam sensed my unease. "Don't worry, Caroline. We'll have this taken care of in no time."

"What should we do about Ava?" I asked him, changing the subject. I wasn't sure if I believed him or not. The way he had said it didn't make me feel like it was true. He was probably just trying to appease me.

"Just tell her there was an accident and Kim was killed," Sam replied calmly. He seemed much different than I had seen him the night before. "She cannot know about all these things that are going on."

I nodded slightly. It felt bad to lie to my best friend again, but it was for her own good.

"If you will excuse me, I have some things to take care of," Sam walked off. He seemed much more put together than he did the previous night, but underneath his tough exterior, I could still see the pain he felt over the loss of Kim. She had been one of them, and it was obvious he felt like it was his fault that she was dead.

"What does this mean?" I asked Seth when Sam had left us.

"What does what mean?" He was a little out of it, but I couldn't blame him. A lot was going on around us. It was almost disorienting.

"They are going after that vampire?" I told him what I was asking about.

"Yes, it only makes sense. We can't have a vampire hunting on our lands, and I think that it will be good to have some closure for Jared. Maybe it will make him feel better."

"So, what will happen?" I asked, worried. I didn't like the idea of Seth fighting a vampire. I wanted him to stay far away, as far away as possible from anything remotely dangerous, especially vampires.

"Don't worry," He held me close to him. "It won't be anything big. There are so many of us I probably won't even get to do anything."

"I just don't like this," I pouted and kissed his lips softly.

"Neither do I, but I have to do this," He pulled my chin up with his fingers and kissed me again. "If not for Kim and Jared, for you."

* * *

So what did you think?

I have a new question for you guys, too.

**Who do you think should play Leah in Eclipse?**


	7. Changed

This chapter is a little shorter than the last couple, but I felt like throwing this in there. I needed a little fluff after all the overwhelming events in the last two chapters! I hope you guys enjoy :) Oh, and review for me.

Vi908

...And if anyone wants to know what I picture the characters to look like they're on my profile, pictures and everything. Just saying.

SM is my hero because she owns all of this.

* * *

It had been over a week since Kim had died and everyone was taking her death surprisingly well, except for Jared, but that was to be expected. I had cried for almost two days straight, but I knew that Kim would never have wanted me to be so upset and so I tried to move one. I knew that I would never forget about her, but I would keep on living my life, like she never had the chance to. Most other people were sharing the same view on Kim's death as I did.

Her funeral had been beautiful, exactly like she would have wanted it to be. There were tons of her favorite flowers and it didn't seem so sad like other funerals I had been to, it was more bittersweet. I didn't cry much because all of my tears had already been shed, and the minister didn't make it seem so depressing either. It was more of a time where everyone could reflect and remember Kim and what a great person she was rather than mourn and cry over her unexpected death. Everyone who loved her was there, except for the one person who loved her most. Jared had shown up at the beginning, but he had to leave before the funeral began because he just couldn't take it. Seeing him was just plain heart-wrenching.

"Poor Jared," I cried. Seth held me as I turned away from the emotional sight at the funeral. Jared was standing over by Kim's casket, crying. I wasn't used to seeing guys cry. I had only seen my brother cry once when I had accidently hit him in the nuts with a football when I was seven. It was a little overwhelming to see big, strong Jared bawling like a baby.

"It's okay," Seth soothed me. "Jared just needs some time and space."

Jared couldn't take it anymore. He ran out of the small church where Kim's funeral was being held, leaving looks of pity in his wake. There was barely a dry eye in the whole church after his little display.

After the ceremony, there was lunch for everyone at Sam and Emily's house. Emily had really outdone herself with the delicious food, but I didn't really have an appetite. I was still upset. Seth eventually forced me to eat some food so I didn't starve to death.

The whole situation had been a tough one. Kim's death had been so sudden, so surprising that no one had the chance to say good-bye. We all felt like we needed closure and the only way to get that was to get revenge on the vampire that had killed her, but that was proving hard to do. Ava had been particularly difficult to deal with. I had told her exactly what Sam told me to tell her: that Kim had been in an accident and that was the reason why she died, but she didn't seem to believe me, although she didn't say anything otherwise. To the public, that was the official reason of Kim's death. I had never been a very good liar and I hoped that she couldn't see straight through me. She hadn't attended the funeral with me because the funeral was strictly close friends and family only, and though she had been invited, she felt like she wouldn't fit in well there so she opted not to go. She did, however, send flowers to Kim's devastated parents who had gone on a vacation for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary only to come back and find their only child murdered.

Since Kim's death, I had been spending more and more time down in La Push, much to my family and best friend's chagrin. It wasn't that they didn't like my new friends, but I was hardly at home anymore; Ava was also a little jealous that I wasn't spending all my free time with her. I not only enjoyed being in La Push with Seth and all of my new friends, but I felt safer there in the presence of lots of super-strong werewolves who could protect me from any dangerous vampires that came my way. According to Embry, they had last spotted the vampire who killed Kim right outside of Forks, but she had slipped right through their grasps. They would have caught her already, but, like Jacob had said, she had quite a knack for escaping tough situations. I was afraid she would come to Port Angeles. Seth had reassured me many, many times that she was staying closer to rural, less populated towns and that I didn't have anything to worry about.

"You aren't still worried about this, are you?" He asked me as we laid in his bed one night. Of course my mother didn't know that I was sneaking off to be with Seth almost every night. She thought I was comforting Emily through the rough patch she was having after the loss of her best friend, Kim. I felt bad for lying to her, but I couldn't help myself. I needed to be with him.

"A little bit," I didn't lie. "But you can't blame me for being a little scared. You know that it is a possibility."

"Yes, it is, but it is also highly unlikely," Seth explained, letting a hand trail down the side of my body. He was an expert at trying to take my mind off of things.

I wasn't going to let him distract me that easily. "We thought that a vampire ever killing Kim was highly unlikely, too."

"Caroline, I'm going to tell you this and I don't want you to freak out. This might either make you feel a lot better or a lot worse," He was suddenly very serious. "This female leech is still outside of Forks. She isn't going anywhere. She hasn't even moved towards any other place in the past few days."

"What does that mean?"

"We think she might be looking for something, or someone," Seth told me. I wasn't sure how I felt about the situation. Sure, I felt better now that I knew I wouldn't be running into her in Port Angeles anytime soon, but knowing that she was in the neighboring town was not much better.

"What do you think she is looking for?" I felt a little queasy. Hopefully, she wasn't looking for her next meal.

"We aren't sure. It's just a guess," He shrugged his shoulders. "But there has to be a reason why she is staying so close to Forks. It isn't normal for a vampire to stick around somewhere. They usually are more nomadic."

I thought about this. "Has she killed anymore people?"

"Two hikers," He said sadly. He was still really upset over their mistake, as was everyone else. Not only had they lost Kim, an important part of their pack, two innocent people had been killed.

"I'm not going hiking any time soon," I shuddered slightly. Those poor people had been unsuspecting, just like Kim. At least she had known that vampires actually existed, the hikers hadn't.

"You are not going anywhere out of my sight while this whole thing is going on," He rested his chin on my head. "I know that she isn't going near Port Angeles, and you shouldn't be worried, but I'm not going to let her get anywhere close to you."

"Good," I sighed and snuggled closer to him.

Most people in La Push shared the same worries that I did. Seth and a few members of the pack were the only ones who weren't running around like lunatics, and I was pretty sure that the only reason they weren't was so they wouldn't scare everyone else. Tensions were on high in La Push. It was hard to go to Emily's house and have fun anymore because all we ever talked about was the vampire and it reminded us all too much of Kim. Emily was probably the worst off out of all of us. She tried to act strong, but her stress showed through clearly.

"Emily, do you need any help?" It had been hard for her without Kim. Kim had always been there to help her cook and wash dishes and do all the things she couldn't do by herself. I made it a point to help her out as much as I could.

"No, I'm fine," She sighed and wiped the sweat of her forehead. She looked exhausted. She had been running around all morning cooking lunch for the whole pack.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Because I'm here to help whenever you need me."

"Thanks so much, Caroline, really," She smiled toughly. "If I ever need help, I'll be sure to let you know."

Sam had been very thankful for my help with Emily. He was worried that she was trying to overdo herself, but I reassured him that she was just upset over the loss of Kim and that she needed time to heal. Helping the boys was always what made Emily happy and if that's what she needed to help her heal, then so be it.

* * *

"Port Angeles Dance Academy, this is Caroline speaking. How may I help you?" I still had to volunteer at the studio on some days, like I did at the beginning of the summer. "All right, I'll sign your daughter up for classes on Tuesday and Thursday starting next week…Thank you, Mrs. Johansen."

Quil still brought little Claire to dance class every Wednesday and I always looked forward to seeing the two of them. While I was in La Push, my company was usually limited to Seth, only during the night, he had been patrolling a lot more lately which cut down on our time together, and the other imprints, Emily and Sara, the girl Embry had imprinted on, who I got on with pretty well. The guys were normally out tracking that vampire so I hadn't seen Quil or the other guys in a long time.

"Hey, Caroline," Quil greeted me warmly. Besides Seth, he was one of my favorite people to hang out with in La Push. "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing, just stuck at this desk all day," I sighed. I'd much rather have been in La Push with Seth than stuck behind a desk answering phones at the ballet studio. It was really boring.

"That's better than what I have to do," As much as Quil loved Claire, he dreaded taking her to ballet class. He really stood out among the moms that were there with their daughters. Usually, he sat in the lobby and talked to me the entire time.

"Any news on the situation lately?" I asked. Seth had been keeping me in the dark lately.

"Not really," He cringed. "She's still right outside of Forks, but we can't seem to catch her. She is real slippery."

I didn't say anything.

"But don't worry, Caroline," He took my silence as a scared one. "This will all be over in no time."

As much as I wanted to believe him, I just couldn't make myself. I had a really horrible feeling about this whole thing. I didn't know what was wrong, but I had a strange feeling in my stomach that told me something bad was going to happen.

Ava came and hung out at my house after we finished volunteering at the dance studio. I felt bad because I couldn't tell her anything, and she knew that something was up with me. I desperately wanted to tell her everything, but I couldn't. I had lost my confidante, Kim, and now I didn't have anyone to talk to. Sure, I had Seth, but that wasn't the same. I did have Ava, but the fact that she wasn't an imprint or part of the pack kept me from telling her anything.

"How is your brother?" She asked as we relaxed in my room and read the latest issue of _Cosmo_, that came to my house monthly by mail.

"Fine, I guess," It was weird for her to ask about Ethan. She never really cared about him that much. "He and Katie just broke up out of nowhere."

"Really?"Ava gasped. We had both thought that Ethan and Katie would be together forever. They would be the high school sweethearts who got married. "For real? You're not joking, are you?"

"Yep," I replied to her question. "He doesn't seem too upset about it though. I think they might have been having some problems lately."

"Who knows?" Ava returned to the article she was studying, but something was up with her and I was going to find out. She seemed a little jumpy. "Anyways, are you going to see Seth this afternoon?"

"Yeah, why?" I asked suspiciously.

"I was just wondering," She said defensively. Something was definitely up. First, she asks about Ethan. Then, she starts acting all jumpy and changes the subject.

Later that afternoon, I went down to La Push to see Seth. He, of course, was waiting for me the minute my VW Passat pulled up at his house. Seth drew me into his arms before I even had a chance to get out of the car. I was stressed and worried, so I held onto him longer than normal.

"Do you want to walk down to First Beach?" He asked and I nodded yes.

He grabbed my hand and led me down the rocky shores to the deserted beach. Even though it was summertime, the water was still cold, too cold for normal human beings like me to swim in it, so no one was ever really around. A few crazy people were out surfing, but other than them, no one else was out. The view of the beach was beautiful. The towering crags of James Island were visible over the choppy, breaking waves.

"This is where I first started falling in love with you," I revealed as we sat down in the sand. I thought back on the night Ava and I had attended the bonfire Quil had invited us to. Seth and I had spent most of the night by ourselves, walking on the beach. That was back before I had known he was a werewolf, before Kim had died.

Seth sighed nostalgically. "I knew I was in love with you the first time I saw you."

"Yeah, you were staring at me like a loony," I laughed. He had scared me a little bit the first time we met. His staring had been a little creepy.

"Only because you were so beautiful," He crooned. It was so corny that I couldn't resist elbowing him in the ribs, which I was sure hurt me more than it did him. "What? It's true. You mesmerized me with your beauty."

"Then, I didn't see you for, like, two weeks," I said angrily, thinking back on the two weeks I had spent desperately waiting for Seth to come visit me at the ballet studio. Those weren't the best days of my life. "I thought you had forgotten about me."

"No, I hadn't," He draped his arm around my shoulders and pulled my body closer to his. "But I just couldn't randomly come up to Port Angeles to see you. I had to at least act like I wasn't a lovesick fool. That's why I had Quil invite you and Ava to the bonfire."

"I never knew that you were behind the whole thing," That was new information.

"Of course I was. I was practically dying to see you," He revealed to me for the first time. "It took everything I had not to run up and drag you away when I first saw you that night."

I smiled lightly. He had hugged me that night, and I clearly remembered the feeling of electricity that rushed through me when he had touched me. It was the same feeling I still had whenever I was around Seth. "That was the night I thought Leah was your girlfriend."

"What?" He burst out laughing. His laughter was almost as loud as the waves crashing in on the beach. "You thought Leah was my girlfriend?"

"It was before the two of you came down to the beach and someone, I think it was Jared, mentioned that the two of you were coming down together and I just assumed that she was your girlfriend."

"That is just disgusting," He grimaced.

"But Embry cleared it up for me shortly afterwards," I told him. I had been so depressed when I thought he had a girlfriend, and when Embry revealed that Leah was only his sister, I was practically ready to go jump for joy, I was so happy. "Besides, I thought that since you were so good looking and sweet that you had to have a girlfriend."

"I know. It was hard to believe that I was single, wasn't it?" He joked around and I smacked him on the shoulder, only resulting in my hand stinging in pain and Seth laughing at me harder (after he checked and made sure I was alright, of course).

"So much has changed this summer," I looked out onto the water, the setting sun reflecting off of it. It was a rare sunny day in the Olympic Peninsula.

"Yes, it has," Seth agreed with me. He hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to say next. "I never thought I would find you."

"What do you mean?" I asked, tilting my head to the side and letting my dark hair run off my shoulders.

"I knew that it would happen sooner or later, that I would imprint on some girl and, believe me, I wasn't very happy about it. I didn't want to find her, to find you. The idea of imprinting had always kind of turned me off. I didn't like that there wasn't any free will involved. I was upset that I couldn't choose who _I _wanted to be with."

I could see where he would be like that. The whole Sam/Emily/Leah love triangle (that he had filled me in on earlier in the summer) had been a hard experience for him and it was all caused because of imprinting. The tension was still there between the three of them and Leah would never be the same person again. It only made sense that he hadn't wanted to experience that himself.

He continued. "When I first saw you, all of that changed. Quil had literally dragged me to Port Angeles to take Claire to stupid ballet class so he wouldn't feel dumb standing around with a bunch of moms. He couldn't find anyone else to sucker into going with him so he just grabbed me and threw me into his car with Claire. I complained the whole way to Port Angeles," He paused and chuckled a bit. "The moment I saw you, though, it was like there was no one else in the world. All I could see was you; all I _wanted_ to see was you. I hadn't even realized that I had imprinted on you, but Quil had because he knew what it felt like. When you left the room with Claire, I just couldn't believe it…I had finally found you, and I was happy about it."

Seth's speech had knocked me off guard. I had never really thought of imprinting being against his will. I knew that it happened the moment the werewolf saw a person, but I had never thought it was involuntary.

"Are you still upset?" He gave me a confused look. "Are you still upset that you didn't get to choose who you wanted to be with?"

"No," Seth shot out quickly. "Of course I'm not. Sam, Jared, and Quil always told me that when it happened, my feelings would change and they did. They really did."

"It's a little unfair," I stated simply. Why couldn't Seth have the right to pick who he wanted to spend the rest of his life with? If the only reason he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me was because he was a werewolf and that side of him told him he had to, I didn't want to force him into anything.

"Caroline, I know for a fact that even if I wasn't a werewolf and I hadn't imprinted on you, I would still want to spend forever with you," He cleared up my doubts. "You are perfect for me."

I smiled. "Are you sure? This isn't just your werewolf side talking?"

"I am one hundred percent positive."

"I love you, Seth," It was the first time I had ever told him that I loved him. I had been thinking about it for weeks, whether or not I was in love with him, and I knew the minute I saw him in the terminal when I came back from Chicago that I was in love with him. I had just been waiting for the right time to tell him and with everything going on lately, I hadn't found the time yet, but now was as good as ever.

His loving brown eyes lit up at my words and he smiled bigger than I had ever seen him smiled before. "You have no idea what it feels like for me to hear you say those words."

"I think I might understand," I whispered as he closed in the space between us. "I love you, Seth."

"Say it again," He moaned and leaned his warm forehead on mine. His dark hair fell in my eyes and I giggled.

"I love you, I love you, I love you," I said softly as the gap between us got smaller and smaller. I could feel his hot touch lighting every inch of my skin on fire as his hands trailed down my back.

"I love you, too," He kissed me passionately. That alone was enough to make all my worries go away.

* * *

Aw, sweet. Please, please, please review, and I will love you forever!


	8. Vanishings

I've posted Chapter 8 and 9 together so I expect a lot of reviews from you guys! My author's notes are posted in chapter 9 so make sure you read those when you read chapter 9.

Vi

* * *

"We've caught a new scent," Paul rushed into Emily's house where I was currently having lunch with the mistress of the place. He ran in so fast that he startled me and I dropped the fork I held in my right hand on the ground. It landed on the floor with a loud clatter.

Sam, who was sitting in the living room partially paying attention to the TV, jumped out of his seat and took long strides over towards the half-dressed Paul. Seth had just entered the room behind him and he, like his friend, was also barely wearing any clothes, only a pair of jean cut-off shorts. I found it hard not to drool.

"What is it?" Sam's tone switched from the normal, loving tone he had when he was speaking to Emily and I early to one of great command. It was easy to see why he was the leader of their pack.

"It's a vampire, but not the same one we've been tracking," Seth informed the older man. "It was slightly familiar. We think it might be one of the Cullens."

"What makes you think that?" Sam picked his questions carefully and wisely.

"Besides the scent, of course, the leech was very carefully not to cross the boundary," Paul filled him in on the details. "It was like it knew exactly where the boundary line was. The bloodsucker followed the line like it was reading straight from a map."

Sam made no response but he and Paul quickly walked out of the house while Seth lingered behind a little while. Emily, seeing that he wished to speak with me alone, excused herself to the back of the house.

"What is happening?" I broke the silence.

"One of the Cullens is back," He ran a hand through his dark hair. It was a nervous habit of his.

"And..?"

"We will probably go after them for breaking the treaty," Seth revealed this new information to me.

"Oh," I gasped. I was at a loss for words. Why would the pack be going after the Cullens now? Had they broken the treaty? Seth had told me that they didn't know for sure if one of them had bit Bella Swan. When I had regained my senses, I elaborated further on what I was thinking. "I thought you said that it was just as probable that Bella Swan's body washed down the river as it was her becoming a vampire."

"I did say that," He confirmed my beliefs. He didn't say anything else and he avoided eye contact with me which was a first for him.

"Then why are you going after them now?" I asked, confused by the pack's motives. None of this made any sense to me, but, then again, half of the things the pack did never made sense to me.

"Because some of the guys want to use the Cullens as a scapegoat for Kim's death," Seth didn't seem to like the idea too much, and I didn't either.

"That's not right," I protested. "They weren't the ones who killed Kim. You should go after her, not those stupid Cullens."

"That's what I've been trying to tell everyone, but they are still too angry over the fact that the Cullens got away," Seth shook his head, his hair bobbing. "I don't know what to do."

"Talk to Sam," I suggested. "You have to do something."

"I know, I know. I'm just not sure what to do yet," He was clearly distraught over the whole thing, as was I. I wanted the vampire who killed Kim to be destroyed, not the Cullens. I could understand the feelings of bitterness, but I could not believe that they would rather go after some vampires that had never done anything to them than go after Kim's murderer.

"How does Jared feel about this?" I knew that Jared wouldn't be happy about it. He wanted revenge just as much, if not more, than the rest of us did.

"He doesn't know," Seth replied. "Sam is keeping him out of this whole thing. He says that Jared is too emotional; that he'll get out there and do something stupid."

"You have to tell Jared, Seth," I pleaded with him and he looked torn. "He deserves to know. Imagine what you would feel like if it had been me instead of Kim. You would want them to tell you, wouldn't you?"

"Telling Jared would be disobedience of a direct order from Sam. I couldn't do that even if I wanted to, Caroline," He informed me and I knew it was the truth. Suddenly, the thought ran through my head that I could tell Jared. It wasn't against the rules for me to tell him. "And no, you can't tell him either. Technically, I'm not even supposed to be discussing this with you. I would get in major trouble if anyone overheard what I'm telling you."

I decided against my plan to tell Jared. I didn't want Seth to get in trouble. "Then why are you telling me?"

"You're involved in this whether we like it or not and I think you have a right to know if you will be in danger or not," He told me.

"Danger? What do you mean?" I asked questioningly. My voice had risen about two octaves, even I could tell.

"There are five members of the Cullen family, or whatever you want to call them, and if Bella is with them, that makes six. Six vampires is a lot, even for us, Caroline. We are used to taking on only one or two at a time, not six, especially not ones that are as gifted as the Cullens. It will be dangerous," His voice dropped and he looked around to make sure that no one else was around. "I'd understand if you wanted to get out of here for a little while, to get away from La Push, from the pack."

"No, Seth, I'm just worried. That's all," I pulled him close to me. The heat radiating off his bare skin warmed me. "I can't leave you, not now."

He breathed a sigh of relief and left a lingering kiss on my forehead. "I promise that I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe. I don't want to have to do this, to fight the Cullens, but if it keeps you out of harm's way, I'll do it."

* * *

"What has got you so jumpy lately?" I asked Ava as we painted our toenails in my living room. She had been looking around every five seconds to see if anyone was coming. She was very on edge, like she had drank a lot of coffee or something.

"What?" She messed up one of her nails for the fourth time. "Oh, nothing, I am fine, absolutely fine."

I raised an eyebrow and went back to painting my toenails 'Passion Fruit Pink". I had determined earlier that something was up with her, but I hadn't figured out just what. Ava was being very secretive about this, more secretive than usual, but I knew it would only be a matter of time until she let something slip—she always did have loose lips. I would just have to wait to find out.

After we had finished with our nails, I flipped on the TV. The first thing that popped up was the news and after seeing the headline, I couldn't help but watch. Even Ava was engrossed into it, a strange thing since Ava hardly ever watched the news.

The TV screen showed a pretty Asian woman with short, bobbed hair in a black blazer and slacks standing in front of a familiar looking forest. It was only familiar because all forests look familiar in the Olympic Peninsula. There were lots of tall trees and, of course, the sky was gray and clouds threatened to pour out rain.

"Reporting live from Forks, Washington this is Linda Chung with the Seattle News. Recently, a set of mysterious disappearances has left this small city in shock and fear. Just a few days ago, John Weber and his wife of twenty-five years, Regina, went on a short hike in these woods, and they were never seen again. What happened to these innocent people? We are not sure, but we do know that something strange is transpiring in this tiny town.

"Another set of disappearances occurred a few weeks ago as well when three teenage hikers were camping in these very woods during the weekend, and they were also never seen again. What do these disappearances have in common? Find out more on Seattle News at Ten," The reporter said during the six o'clock broadcast. When she started talking about the new Children's Hospital, I changed the channel quickly.

"That is really freaky," Ava sipped on a diet coke as we sat and watched _Made _on MTV. There wasn't much on.

"What?" I knew what she was talking about, but I tried to pretend like I didn't. I knew exactly what was going on down in Forks. Vampires were the source of the mysterious loss of those five people.

"Those creepy vanishings in Forks," She shuddered. "Remind me not to go into the woods anytime soon."

I nodded and pretended to be deeply immersed in the episode of _Made _we were watching, but, honestly, I couldn't have cared less. I was scared even more now than I had been before. With Seth, I felt like I could take on the world, but the moment he left my side, all my fears slowly crept back again. Not only was I scared for myself, I was worried about Seth, who had to be out there fighting those frightening vampires. I was absolutely terrified every time he told that they had been close to one. The thought of losing him made me shiver. I was also scared for Ava and all my other friends and family who had no idea what was going, besides the fact that people were randomly disappearing. Seth had told me that they would probably be in no danger at all, though, because their natural sense of self-preservation kept people away from vampires. Apparently, vampires just gave off a weird vibe, or something. I wouldn't know, I had never been around one and I didn't ever want to be.

"Hey, Squirt," Ethan entered the house through the front door. He had with him a couple of bags, probably full of schoolbooks. He had some classes that he had to take over the summer and had gone out to buy more books earlier in the day. "Hey, Ava."

"Hey," I didn't pay much attention to him as he set his bags down on the counter and grabbed a few things with him before heading to the kitchen to get something to eat.

"Hey, Ethan," Ava acknowledged him more than I did. She smiled at him and he smiled back. I didn't say anything at the exchange that went on between them. I was still too immersed in my own world of vampires and werewolves and other scary supernatural things to really care about their uninteresting small talk.

As Ava chattered on mindlessly with my brother and I spaced out completely, the doorbell rang and knocked me out of my trance-like state. "I'll get it." I jumped up from where I was sitting and went to the door to find my boyfriend standing there, wearing a pair of jean cut-off shorts and a haphazardly thrown on t-shirt. He looked like he had ran here, but I saw Jacob's VW Rabbit parked out on the street and I knew he hadn't. "Seth, hey, what are you doing here?"

Not that I minded, I loved being around Seth, but he hardly ever came to my house, and he never did without telling me he was coming first. In fact, Seth never really left La Push anymore. With everything that was going on, he didn't have a lot of spare time to just do what he wanted. It was hard enough for him to find a few minutes to spend with me.

"I need to talk to you," He said quietly and directed his gaze to where my brother and my best friend stood talking in the kitchen. They both had noticed that Seth had arrived, and were trying to pretend like they weren't listening in on our conversation but they were failing miserably. "In private."

"Hey, Sean," My brother said almost cordially, but I knew for a fact he still didn't like Seth. It was probably the fact that he never got Seth's name right. Part of me thought that maybe Ethan was calling him the wrong name on purpose. I wouldn't have put it past my brother to do that.

"It's Seth, Ethan," I rolled my eyes at his childishness as he scowled at me. "His name is Seth."

Seth and I turned away and headed towards my bedroom only to be stopped by my older brother, "Where do you two think you're going?"

"To my room. We have to talk," I said slowly, annunciating every word just like I was trying to get my point across to someone with a learning disability. I seemed to get the point across.

"You," Ethan stared Seth down straight in the eye; he wasn't really looking at him straight in the eye since Ethan was a good five inches shorter than Seth's 6'4 frame. It was kind of funny, "keep your hands off of my sister."

Again, I rolled my eyes and kept dragging Seth down the hallway towards my room. Ethan's overprotective brother faze had kicked in late, and while he did have the right motives behind his actions, I wasn't too fond of him meddling in my life, especially at a stressful time like this.

"Sorry about him. He's a freak. I think he might have been switched at birth or something like that," I told Seth once we had closed the door to my room.

"It's okay. He just loves you," He knew how it was. His sister, Leah, was gorgeous and there was no doubt that he was always fending off boys for her.

"So, what did you have to talk to me about?" I got back on subject. Ethan had momentarily distracted me.

"I think maybe you should come and stay in La Push for a few days," He said. "And by I think I mean, you need to come and stay in La Push."

"Has something happened?" I asked, worried about the friends I had grown so close to over the past two months. I couldn't take it if I lost another close friend. It would just be too much to bear.

"No, not yet, at least," He informed me, "but we have a feeling that something is going to happen soon. It would make me feel a lot better if you came and stayed in La Push. Vampires, the Cullens, really, stay away from La Push naturally."

"Okay," I didn't mind. Really, I didn't. I would feel a lot safer in La Push than I did here in Port Angeles. "What should I tell my mom?"

"Uh, tell her that Emily really needs your help because she's been so lonely since Kim's death," He thought on the spot. It wasn't a very good excuse, but it would have to do, for now at least.

I jotted down a little note in my horrible handwriting for my mom telling her where I was going to be and what I was doing there, hoping that my note would suffice. Not knowing how long I would be staying in La Push, I threw a few sets of clothes and other essentials in my duffel bag. "I'm ready."

"Okay, lets go," Seth grabbed my hand and my bag and led me out of the house, but not before we were stopped by my brother who demanded to know where I was going and why.

When I told Ethan what was going on (the fake reason, not the real one), he accepted my lame excuse, but he did seem sort of suspicious about it. "If I find out you have been—"

"Oh, god, Ethan, just shut up," I covered my ears and blocked out the rest of his conversation. He was such an overprotective brother. "Ava, I'm really sorry to leave you like this, but I have to go or else I wouldn't."

"It's okay," She said sympathetically. "Tell Emily that I hope she starts to feel better soon."

"I'll tell her," Ava gave me a tight hug and I felt like she understood that there was more going on than just Emily being upset. I felt my stomach tie in knots, for some odd reason. Leaving my house and Ava behind just felt wrong. "Be careful, Ava."

"I promise that I will," She looked me in the eyes and something passed between us, an understanding of sorts. In that moment, she knew that there were bigger things in the world besides her and me and Emily being upset. "You just take care of yourself too, Caroline."

"You don't have to worry about me," I was more worried about her and my family and other friends than I was about myself. They didn't know anything about the craziness of this world. They didn't know that just an hour away in Forks a raging vampire was on the loose. If anyone needed to take care of themselves, it had to be them.

"I think I do," She replied. It was as if she had some type of sixth sense that was telling her I was in more danger than I pretended to be. If I hadn't known any better, I would have sworn she knew exactly what was actually happening, but I did know better than that. There was absolutely no possible way Ava Morgan could know the extent of what was going on in the sleepy little town of Forks, Washington.

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REVIEW!


	9. Amnesty

It has been longer than I expected guys, but I've finally updated! I just wasn't sure how I wanted to do this chapter since it is such a crucial part of the storyline, but I've finally figured it out and so here it is. I hope you guys enjoy it, and please, please, please, review.

By the way, I've also started to write a new Draco Malfoy story called _Liar_. If you like Harry Potter and Malfoy, then stop by and give it a read. I'd really appreciate it.

I don't own anything, Stephenie Meyer does.

Vi

* * *

It was true, the Cullens were back in town, and it wasn't just one of them like the pack had originally thought. It was all of them, six of them, which meant that Bella Swan, the girl who had supposedly died in a car accident a few years back, was with them. The pack had been in an uproar ever since Paul had first caught a glimpse of them right off the boundary lines that the treaty had created over seventy years ago. A small skirmish of sorts had gone on between Paul and the biggest one, Emmett some said his name was, but neither of them had been hurt. Paul's unruly temper had started the fight. He had thought that this Emmett was about to step over the line so he snapped which set off his family.

"What do you mean they want to meet with us?" Paul screeched, outraged at the thought of peacefully meeting with vampires. I swore that I felt the table I was sitting at in Sam and Emily's house shake slightly. The oldest one, the doctor, had waited on the outside of the boundary to meet with Sam to talk about the situation at hand. They had talked and agreed that the two groups would need to meet, and when Sam had brought it up, all hell had broken loose.

"They are freaking bloodsuckers, Sam. How do we know that we can trust them?" Embry had a point. Weren't they arch-enemies or something? Vampires and werewolves were not supposed to get along.

"We don't know that, Embry. All we can do is trust them. They want to help us with the leech that killed Kim," Sam replied. He was starting to show all the stress that was thrown on him on his face.

"But they broke the treaty! We can't just let them get away with it," Paul shot back angrily. His whole body was pulsating and I backed farther away from him and closer towards Seth. Paul scared me when he was angry.

"Who would you rather get, Paul? The vampire that killed Kim or the Cullens? Be honest," Seth pitched in. He stood as the voice of reason throughout all the chaos. "I, for one, would rather have justice for Kim's death."

A few of the other guys nodded in agreement, including Brady, Collin, and Quil, but Paul sat in stony silence. He had been shut up, for now at least.

"We will meet with them tomorrow night at midnight outside the boundary line," Sam informed them. There was no question. They were going no matter if they wanted to or not. "Leah, Brady, and Collin will stay here."

Brady and Collin were the youngest out of the whole pack and they were constantly being left behind and out of the action. According to Seth, neither of them liked it very much. They would jump at the chance of getting any action at all. Seth had been treated like that for some time as well, he had told me before. It wasn't until he had proved himself in action that he had finally been allowed to do anything he considered remotely interesting. I didn't like to think about Seth doing anything dangerous.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Seth whispered as he sat down at the table beside me.

I nodded. Seth would be in danger tonight, danger from vampires. I couldn't stand the thought of it. There was no way I would be able to sleep at night knowing that he wasn't safe. "Are you scared?"

He didn't reply and I took his silence as a yes. He was trying to be brave and calm, something that a lot of the others weren't doing. Paul had stormed out and nearly broke the door off of its hinges while most of the others sat in their seats in silent rage. Seth was the only one taking it calmly. Even Jacob, who normally was very controlled, looked like he was about to explode.

"Why do I have to stay?" Leah demanded, her pretty face full of fury. She was so mad she was shaking, just like Paul earlier, and I was starting to get a little fearful of her. Seth roughly pushed me behind him.

"Leah, not now," Sam shot a look at her that told her to be quiet. She did as she was told, but she didn't like it. She ran out the door fuming. A few moments later we heard a loud howl. I could only assume that it was Leah.

"I want you to stay here with Emily tonight," Seth told me once the group had dispersed from Sam and Emily's house. "I'll feel much better knowing that you're safe in La Push."

"Okay," I didn't argue with his reasoning. He was right, I was a lot safer in La Push than I was anywhere else. The Cullens weren't allowed to come to the reservation and the female vampire that had killed Kim was staying away from the pack as much as possible.

"I know that I'm acting really overprotective right now, but it's for your own good, Caroline. I promise that it won't always be like this," Seth sighed and rested his warm hand on my neck. "I love you and I want you to be safe."

"I love you, too, Seth, and it's fine, really, it is," I reassured him. Truthfully, I didn't mind his worrying; it was kind of cute actually. "I feel safer here, anyways."

* * *

"Is it always like this when they go off?" I asked Emily as we sat in her living room that night, waiting for the men we loved to return. It was quiet, almost eerily so, with all of the guys gone. I had never been in Emily's house when it was that empty. For some reason, it just felt wrong for all of the pack not to be around.

She shrugged from where she was sitting on the couch, curled up with a book, a blanket, and a cup of hot coffee. "Most of the time. It is a lot more bearable with you around."

"Thanks," I smiled softly, taking a sip from the coffee Emily had fixed us earlier in the night. It was around one o'clock in the morning, an hour after the pack had left to meet the Cullens.

Emily and I sat in comfortable silence for a while. She was very easy to be around; I didn't especially feel like sitting there and having small talk with her while I was worrying about Seth and she knew that. It was obvious that she could read people very well. For her silence, I was thankful.

The silence gave me some time to mull over a few things in mind, including what would happen when the summer was over. I would have to go to school and I wouldn't be able to spend as much time with Seth, something I was not looking forward to at all. Not only did I have time to think about the small things, like what I would do when summer ended and what was going on with Ava lately, but I had time to sit there and worry about what was going on with Seth and the rest of the pack.

It was nearing the two o'clock hour when I started growing restless and anxious for Seth to come back so I could know that he was okay and not hurt. I glanced outside the window every couple of seconds for any signs of the pack, but there was none. The minutes seemed to tick by deathly slow.

"Have you heard any of the Quileute legends?" Emily asked me. I was glad that she interrupted my worrying. "Besides the one about the Cold Ones, of course."

"A few. Seth told me about the Spirit Warriors and Utlapa," I admitted to her, a little ashamed of my lack of knowledge when it came to all things Quileute. "We used to learn about them in elementary school, but I don't really remember them well."

"Have you ever heard of the third wife?"

"Can't say I have," I replied.

"Do you want me to tell you?" She asked considerately and I nodded yes, ready for anything to take my mind off of the fact that Seth was still out there with God knows how many vampires. "You know about how our tribe came to become werewolves, how Taha Aki first became a wolf, right? Well, Taha Aki had a three wives, and his third wife was his imprint so when he found her, he gave up his phasing to grow old with her."

Emily's story intrigued me. I had never heard any legends about imprinting before. Seth had told me a few of the legends, mainly the ones about how the pack came to be and about the Cold Ones, but I had never heard about this one before. Of course, being an imprint myself made the story a little bit more interesting.

"After Taha Aki had started growing old, women in the Makah tribe began to disappear. The Makahs blamed the Quileutes because of their magic so Taha Aki charged his oldest son, Taha Wi, who was also a wolf, to find the person responsible for the disappearances. Taha Wi took five other wolves, including his two brothers, with him into the mountains to look for the culprit, but he sent half of the pack home when the trail they were following led them too far north, leaving just Taha Wi and his two younger brothers to follow the mysterious stench they had found. Taha Wi and his two brothers never returned home. Taha Aki went to the chief of the Makahs, mourning for the loss of his sons, and all trouble between the two tribes ceased.

"About a year later, the disappearances started happening again. The wolves agreed to help the Makahs find the person responsible for them. This time, they found a male Cold One feeding off a woman. They attacked, naturally, but they were inexperienced. None of them had ever fought a vampire before. Only one wolf survived, Yaha Uta, who was the oldest son of Taha Aki's third wife. He brought the Cold One's mangled body back to the village for the elders to see. The corpse was trying to put itself back together so they ripped it to pieces and burned it. Afterwards the spread the ashes so they could be sure it would never come back together again.

"The Cold One's mate came to the village, seeking revenge for her lost love. She was so beautiful that people started bowing down to her, thinking she was a god. Before they had a chance to realize what was happening, she was ripping them to shreds. She killed the last wolf protector of the tribe, Yaha Uta. Angered and upset by the loss of his son, Taha Aki changed into a wolf in order to fight her, but he was old and she was too strong for him to take on by himself.

"Taha Aki's third wife sat back and watched as her oldest son had been killed and now her husband was about to die as well. She knew from the look of the Cold Woman's black eyes that she was thirsty, so she did the only thing she knew to do. She took a knife and stabbed herself in front of the Cold Woman. It distracted her enough for Taha Aki to finish her off. The third wife died, but thanks to her sacrifice, Taha Aki was able to save the rest of the tribe."

I had goosebumps when Emily finished telling her story, and, for once, they weren't the type that appeared when I was scared. "Wow."

"I know, right?" Emily's mood changed completely. While she had been telling the story, she was very serious, but she was smiling now. She was a very good story teller. "That was always my favorite as a little kid."

"It's just very…"

"Relatable?" She finished my sentence for me. As an imprint, I knew exactly what it felt like to sit back and watch everyone else go off and do all the work, and sometimes that could be very frustrating. Having to sit around and worry all day while other people save you from dangerous vampires wasn't fun.

"Yes," I breathed. I was still caught up in the legend of the third wife. The story was playing over and over again in my mind. I couldn't seem to get it out of my head.

A howl from outside the house interrupted my train of thought. Emily jumped up off the couch and I followed her outside into the yard where the pack stood, not as wolves, but as humans. I rushed over to Seth and caught him in a big hug, holding onto him for dear life.

"You're safe," I exclaimed, relieved to have him in my arms again. "I was worried when it was taking so long. What happened?"

"There wasn't any fighting, but there were some tensions, especially between Paul and one of the bigger Cullens, but we found out why that female has been staying so close to Forks and it isn't very good," Seth detailed what had happened at the boundary line earlier. "She's after Bella."

"Bella Swan?" I nearly shouted. This whole complicated story was taking a very strange twist of events. I could barely believe the vampire who had killed Kim was after Bella Swan, who was a vampire now herself. It was all too much.

"Yes, Bella Swan," Seth confirmed my thoughts. "Apparently a few years ago before Bella was changed, Edward killed the female's mate because he had almost killed Bella, that's why they had to change her. She was dying."

"Why is she after Bella though? Shouldn't she go after Edward?"

"It's her own twisted way of getting even—a mate for a mate," He explained to me, a look of disgust evident on his face. "But anyways, that little Cullen girl Alice, the one that can see the future, saw Victoria, that's the vampire's name by the way, around Forks and that's why they came back. They want us to work with them to help get rid of her."

"What did Sam say?" I asked, wondering if the differences between the pack and the Cullens would keep them from working together. "What about the treaty? Didn't the Cullens break it when they changed Bella?"

"We will work with them, even thought most of us don't want to," Seth looked off into the distance beyond my shoulder. I shuddered to think about Seth fighting an evil vampire like this Victoria. She seemed ruthless, "and we will give them amnesty for their help."

"What?" I exclaimed, surprised by the revelation. I had not seen that coming. "Amnesty? I thought everyone was dying for a chance to get the Cullens."

"They really aren't that bad, Caroline," Seth reassured me. "I kind of like them, despite the fact that they are vampires."

I looked at Seth as if he was growing a second head. Was he absolutely crazy? They were vampires, for goodness sakes, and Seth was a werewolf. Vampires and werewolves were natural enemies. "How does everyone else feel about this?"

"They're dealing with it," I knew what that meant. No one else liked the idea. I could only imagine what hot-headed Paul thought about the plan. He was the main one out to get the Cullens. "Besides, we have more important matters to deal with at the moment. Victoria is a lot more dangerous than any of the Cullens."

"Ugh, I feel so useless," I complained. While Seth would be off fighting an evil vampire (which I was not to fond of by the way), I would probably be stuck in La Push cowering in Emily's house like a damsel-in-distress until he came back and told me everything was okay. I didn't really like that. "Why can't I be something cool like a fairy or a witch?"

Seth laughed at me like I knew he would and kissed me on the forehead. "I love you just they way you are--human."

* * *

The Cullens are back! I'm very excited about that. As much as I love the pack, Caroline, and Ava, I've missed writing about the Cullens. We're really getting into the thick of the storyline so I'm planning about four or five more chapters with a possible epilogue coming up, but things aren't set in stone as of right now.

Anyway, review! and check out my new story!


	10. Backstabber

Here is chapter 10! This chapter was especially hard for me to write, but I managed to do it eventually. From the way the story is progressing, I'm going to say that there will only be two or three more chapters (possibly four, but not likely). As of right now, I'm NOT planning on doing a seqeul. I just feel that once this story wraps up that the story of the Cullens and the Pack will be over, for the moment at least. That's not say that I won't go back and write another sequel a few months from now, but I've decided to focus on other projects after this story finishes, specifically my Harry Potter story _Liar_. If you like Draco Malfoy, I suggest you read it!

But, if you have any ideas for another sequel, feel free to tell me. I always like hearing ideas from other people, but that doesn't necessarily mean I will use them.

Anyways, let's get on with the story! and remember to review for me please!

SM owns everything that recognize.

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I hastily undid the lock on the front door of my house, glancing around to make sure no one was watching me. Ever since I had found out about vampires and werewolves, I had become extremely paranoid, always checking to make sure no one was following me or staring at me in a strange way. In a way, it was a good thing. I had become even more aware of my surroundings and therefore safer in this world full of crazy people, but most of the time there wasn't anything happening and it was just me thinking there was something wrong. Being paranoid turned every single person into my would-be attacker. I didn't like it the feeling, but I couldn't really help the way things had turned out.

As I let myself into my house, I found that my mom wasn't home from work yet. Ethan was home, however, and he had a girl with him in his room. I couldn't see them because his door was closed, but I sure could hear them through the walls as I walked to my room and changed out of my sweaty leotard I had been wearing during my dance class and into a pair of velour sweatpants and a tank top. I wondered who it was since Ethan had broken up with his high school sweetheart and girlfriend for three years, Katie, a couple of weeks ago.

I went into our kitchen to grab a bottle of water when my curiosity got the best of me. They would never know if I only slightly peeked into the room for a few seconds. Besides, if Ethan could check up on me and Seth whenever he wanted to then I definitely had a right to know what was going on with him and his new 'girl', or whatever. That excuse would justify my snooping.

I moved stealthily from the kitchen over to the door of Ethan's room and quietly cracked open the door so I could see through a small crack. Through the small sliver I could see Ethan on his bed heavily making out with a pretty blonde girl—a pretty blonde girl that I knew and was best friends with. To say I was shocked was an understatement.

"What is going on here?" Horror was evident in my voice. What was my best friend doing making out with my brother? I could not believe what was happening in front of me.

"Caroline," Ava exclaimed as she and Ethan broke apart. I couldn't even look at her without being sickened. "I can explain."

I had to get away from them, from the house; there was just something between about the two of them together that deeply revolted me. "I don't want to hear it."

"Caroline, just listen to us," Ethan sighed, getting up off his bed and grabbing me by the shoulder to keep me from darting away. "We are dating, whether you like it or not."

"How long has this been going on?" My voice cracked as I asked the question. I was extremely hurt that neither my best friend nor my older brother had bothered to tell me that they were dating one another. Now, I was not only mad about them being together I was also upset that they hadn't told me about it.

"Just two weeks," Ava told me. She almost looked a little bit ashamed of herself, but I didn't care much. I was too angry to care how she felt at the moment.

"I have to get out of here," I breathed shortly, running out of the room and grabbing my car keys of the kitchen counter. I could not stand to be around the two of them any longer.

Ava chased after me, her golden blonde hair flying out behind her as she ran out the door. "Where are you going?"

"Why should I tell you?" I turned around and snapped at her. "You don't bother telling me anything, so why should I let you know anything anymore either?"

"Don't be like that, Caroline," She looked at me disapprovingly. This only made me angrier. How dare she tell me how to act?

"Don't be like what? Don't be upset that you lied to me, you my supposed best friend are hooking up with my older brother for two weeks and you haven't told me anything at all?" I fumed and looked at her incredulously, surprised that she had the audacity to even be talking to me at the moment after what she had done. She was supposed to be my best friend, but she had just stabbed me in the back.

"I was going to tell you, really, I was. I was just worried how you would react," She stated, her voice falling a bit, but part of me didn't believe her, didn't want to believe her. I knew that she and Ethan would have kept this whole thing going until I found out on my own. "I didn't want to hurt you."

"Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you started hooking up with my brother behind my back," I stomped towards my car that was sitting in the driveway. "I just can't talk to you right now. I am too disgusted with you at the moment."

She didn't protest as I stormed angrily away from her, knowing that she needed to stay away from me for her own good. At the point I was at, I wasn't past using physical violence to get my point across. I had punched someone before when I'd gotten really angry.

I jumped in my car, slamming the door loudly, and just drove, not quite sure where I was going at first. After I had been driving around for a while, I decided to head to La Push and see Seth. I was upset and I knew that he would at least be able to cheer me up a little bit. The drive to La Push gave me a while to think and cool off. I had been really angry when I left my house, but by the time I pulled up at Sam and Emily's, I wasn't angry anymore, just upset and hurt that my brother and my best had kept such a big secret from me.

"Caroline, what are you doing here?" Emily greeted me cordially, like she always did; she was sitting out on her front porch doing a crossword puzzle and drinking coffee. No one else was around from what I could tell.

"I was just looking for Seth," I told her, not wanting to bother her with all of my stupid drama. "Have you seen him around?"

"Yeah, he went on patrols this morning with Embry and Paul, but he should be done soon if you want to wait around for a few minutes," Emily told me kindly. She had always been so nice to me, and for that I was thankful.

"Thanks, Emily," I took a seat in the rocking chair beside her silently. She went back to working on her crossword puzzle and we sat in a comfortable and peaceful silence until Seth, Paul, and Embry showed up, all three of them dressed in just cutoff shorts.

I didn't even have to tell Seth that I was upset. When he saw me, he just took one look at my face and knew that something was up. "What's wrong, Caroline? Did something happen?"

"It's Ava," I broke down and cried silently in his arms, all of the feelings from earlier coming back to me at once. I had never been much of a crier, but this summer, crying was all I seemed to do. "She is dating my brother."

"What?" Seth was just as shocked as I had been earlier. Apparently no one had seen it coming. Ava had been acting weird lately, I knew that, but I didn't think that it was because she was dating Ethan. I thought it was just something small and trivial.

"Yeah, I walked in on them making out in Ethan's room. Needless to say, I kind of freaked out and yelled at her and then I just got in my car and drove away," The wind was blowing my hair all over the place as I told Seth the short version of what had happened earlier that afternoon at my house. I had stopped crying and wiped at my eyes. "I didn't tell them where I was going."

"I'm sorry," He said sympathetically and gently smoothed my hair down with his warm hand. "I hate it when you're upset."

"I just wish that they had told me. That's what hurts the most," I thought back on what had happened and cringed at the horrible memory that replayed over in my head. "It would be a lot easier to stomach if I had known and hadn't just walked in on them. I mean, come on. This is Ava and Ethan, here. No one expected this. I know I sure didn't."

"It'll pass eventually," Seth reassured me. "I'm sure within a month or so, all of this will be over, and things can go back to normal. Well, as normal as things can be, that is."

I nodded. He was probably right, but I still didn't want to be anywhere near Ava or Ethan anytime soon. "Would it be alright if I stayed here tonight? I don't want to go back home."

"Of course it would," He took my small hand in his larger one. "I don't have to patrol tonight either."

I smiled at him and I knew that somehow, someway, things would turn out alright.

* * *

"What do you mean Victoria has crossed the border?" Seth's beautiful voice was low and quiet, but not so much that I couldn't hear him talking vehemently to Paul about what had happened.

Victoria, the vampire that had killed Kim and who was also after Bella Swan, had crossed over the border into La Push. I shook slightly at the thought of her being close by somewhere, doing who knows what, and I knew whatever she had to do in La Push could not be good. It was one of the only times in La Push I was scared for my life.

"Exactly what I said," Paul nearly shouted. His voice was louder than Seth's and I could hear it bounce of the walls of the house and echo out into the open air as the three of us stood outside Seth's house at around three o'clock in the morning. I was still wearing my pajamas which consisted of a pair of shorts and an old t-shirt that I borrowed from Seth. "That stupid bloodsucker got past the line."

"How did that happen? Who was running the borders tonight?" Seth fired the questions at Paul rapidly.

"Jared was, but you know how he has been lately. He hasn't quite been on his a-game since Kim died," Paul said darkly. He looked back into the trees for any sign of movement. I shivered knowing that a vampire was around somewhere, closer to me than one ever had been before. "The leech must have gotten by him while he wasn't paying good enough attention. The Cullens did say that it had some type of talent for getting away from people so that probably helped, too."

"What are we doing then? Are we going to go find her?" Seth sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair.

"Sam called the Cullens and they are coming down here as soon as they can get here, which shouldn't be long. We're supposed to report to him as soon as possible," Paul replied, looking at me pointedly. I knew what he was thinking—where was I supposed to go? I was in danger in La Push. I wasn't the only one whose life was at risk either, everyone's was.

Seth looked torn as he stared at me with sad eyes. Glimpsing between me and Paul, I felt as if he was making a decision, like he was choosing between me and the pack. I knew that I couldn't force him to do that. "Seth, I'll be fine. I'll just go to Emily's house. You have to go with them."

Paul wondered off a little ways, but not too far, just to give us some space. He continued to stare off into the dark, foreboding woods. We each knew what lurked out there.

"I know," He said in a strangled voice and placed his hand on my cheek and it warmed my body in the cool night air. "I just don't want to."

"The sooner you leave, the sooner you can come back to me," I tried to at least be a little optimistic for Seth's sake, but it was a hard feat. I couldn't pretend that I wanted Seth to go away from me. I could feel a lump forming in the back of my throat at the thought of him leaving me.

"Paul will walk with you to Emily and Sam's house," He pulled me towards him in a hug and held me tightly against his chest. I rested my head in the crook of his neck and breathed in his scent. "Promise me that you will go to Emily's and stay there. Don't leave until I come back. Promise me, Caroline."

"I promise, Seth," I whispered almost inaudibly, holding onto his as tightly as I possibly could. "I know you have to leave; I just wish you didn't have to."

"I wish I didn't have to either," He grimaced, pulling away from me slightly, but I still held onto him, unwilling to let him go off and fight a dangerous, sadistic vampire.

He kissed me very softly. It felt like his warm lips had barely touched mine when he pulled away from me. His brown eyes met mine one last time before he took off into the woods, taking his shirt off as he went.

"Come on, let's go," Paul motioned for me to follow him on the short walk to Emily and Sam's house. He took off walking, taking long strides. I struggled to keep up with him. "It is not safe to be out here for so long."

"Paul," I said his name as I power walked so I wouldn't lose him. We had never really talked much before, just pleasantries and such, but I knew a lot about him thanks to Seth. He and Seth seemed to clash a lot; their personalities were very different. While Seth was usually all smiles and happy, Paul had quite the temper from what I had been told, and Seth usually tried to keep me away from him in case he lost control while I was around and hurt me.

"Yeah?" He didn't turn to look at me, but kept on going as if I hadn't said anything to him. I could tell he was trying to control himself and calm down, but I imagined it was very hard for him with a rabid vampire on the loose in La Push.

"Will you watch out for Seth for me?" I asked him quietly. I knew that he would even if I hadn't asked. Even though he and Seth didn't always get along, they were brothers in a way because of the pack. They had each others' backs.

He barely nodded, but he did. If I hadn't been watching him closely, I would not have even noticed. He didn't have to say anything at all for me to understand what he meant.

When I got to Emily's house, Paul speedily ushered me inside before he ran off just like Seth had and I was relieved to go in and find the house all warm and toasty. It might have been summer time, but it still was the Olympic Peninsula so it was a little chilly outside. The heat was also a thing of comfort for me now. It reminded me of Seth strangely enough.

"Hey, Caroline," Sara, the girl Embry had imprinted on, was sitting alone in the living room when I walked in. The TV was on and some infomercial was playing, no doubt for the twentieth time that night, but I could tell she was barely paying any attention to it, if any at all. She, like me, was worried and scared half to death.

I acknowledged her and sat down beside her on the couch. She was nice and the two of us got along really well. We were very different, but, in a way, that was a good thing. She reminded me a little bit of Ava, but Sara was softer somehow. They had the same long, golden blonde hair and outgoing personality, but Ava was a little sportier than Sara was. They were both fun to be around.

Thinking of Ava made my heart ache. I had been so angry, angrier than I had ever been at her, earlier in the day, but, now, I was just worried that I would never see her again. Losing Kim earlier in the summer had changed me. I knew now that each day was not guaranteed. Like my mom always told me, it takes a life-changing situation to make you not take things for granted. Never before had that hit so close to home for me as it did as I sat on the couch beside Sara. Ava was my best friend in the whole and I couldn't stay mad at her forever.

"Do you girls want some coffee?" Emily asked us. She was busy running around in the kitchen, keeping her mind busy so she wouldn't have to think about what was going on outside her house.

Sara and I both nodded yes, accepting the two mugs of steaming hot coffee Emily held out to us. There was no way I was going to sleep until I knew Seth was alright, and I would drink as much coffee as I needed to keep me up that long.

* * *

The plot thickens...

Well, go ahead and review and tell me what you thought of this chapter! If you personally have any ideas for a third sequel message me or leave it in your review!


	11. Separation Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Sorry it has taken me so long to update, guys, but I've been SUPER busy lately with school and some last minute stuff I had to do before summer ends. This chapter is pretty long so I hope it makes up for this being so late. Anyways, this story is almost over--just two chapters left. I know, it's sad, but I'm kind of glad to wrap up the story even though I've enjoyed writing it so much. Well, please review!!!

**Question: How does everyone feel about the replacement of Rachelle Lefevre? Does anyone like Bryce Dallas Howard? I think she's gorgeous, but I'll miss Rachelle. She was an AWESOME Victoria--just like I pictured her when I was reading the books.**

I don't own anything you recognize. SM is the Queen of All.

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"What was that?" Sara's golden blonde head snapped towards the direction the loud, booming sound was coming from outside. It almost sounded like thunder or like rocks colliding, but I knew that it could be neither of those.

"I'm not sure," Emily said grimly, trying to stay calm and concentrate on the blanket she was crocheting but I could tell that her hands were shaking slightly. I would have gone to the window to see what was going on outside, but I was too afraid of what I would find when I looked out.

Another earsplitting boom sounded from outside the house and I jumped slightly from where I was sitting on the couch. I could only imagine what that sound was. I tried to keep my mind off of Seth and all the others in danger out there by reading a small book that Emily had lying around, but I couldn't focus on any of the words that were in front of me. I had been reading one page for over fifteen minutes.

As the night wore on, it only seemed to get worse. The loud unexplainable noises continued and every time they sounded, I found myself getting more and more anxious and uncomfortable. I was so worried that I felt like I was going to throw up. Seth, my Seth, was out there in danger, and here I was sitting in Emily's living room reading a book. I felt horribly and utterly useless.

"What do you think is going on out there?" Sara asked me softly, her voice quivering faintly. Her face normally tan face was abnormally pale and lacked all color. She looked just as nervous and as scared as me.

"Who knows," I said despairingly, bringing my hands up to cover my eyes. I could feel my tears welling up at all this frustration I was feeling at the moment. All I wanted to know was that Seth was okay and that he wasn't hurt or in trouble or anything. Was that so much to ask for? I didn't think so.

Another deafening bang sounded outside the house, scaring Sara and me so much that we jumped from our seats. Emily, God bless her, had laid down on the couch and, from what I could tell, she was sleeping rather peacefully. Even the loud noises didn't wake her. I was surprised at her ability to sleep at a time like this.

"What was that?" Sara whispered breathily, asking the same question for the umpteenth time that night. She was holding onto my arm for what seemed like dear life; her grip was so tight I was losing sensation in my upper arm.

I didn't reply to her because I didn't know, but as the two of us inched our way towards the front door, a bad feeling overtook me. Goosebumps were popping up all over my arms and legs and the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end. Something wasn't right.

"Do you want to go outside?" She asked, looking towards the door like it had some type of disease that could kill us if we went anywhere near it.

"I'm not sure," Seth had told me directly to go to Emily's and to not leave until he got back, but going outside for a couple of seconds couldn't hurt me, right? The noises sounded like they were far off.

"I guess we could just step outside on the porch for a few seconds and look if we see anything," Sara suggested and I nodded. Everything would be okay, at least that was what I kept repeating in my head over and over again.

"Just to be safe," I reached out and grabbed one of the butcher knives in the kitchen. I was almost one hundred percent sure that a butcher knife would not help me escape from a vampire, but having it with me made me feel a little bit better.

Sara cracked open the front door hesitantly, her hand shaking as she did it. The cool night air hit us like a hammer out of the blue, sending shivers down my spine. It was unusually cold, even for the Olympic Peninsula, and it was a strange cold, too. It wasn't the type that makes you want to grab a pair of mittens and light a fire; it was the kind that chills you to your very core and compels you to run inside, jump in bed, and hide under the covers.

I could see my breath in the air as I talked to Sara, who had relinquished her death grip on my arm. "It doesn't look like anything is out of the ordinary."

"You're right," She nodded her head in agreement, "but I can just feel it, Caroline. Can't you? Something is wrong, really wrong."

Silence overcame to two of us as we stared out into the black abyss that was La Push. It was so dark that I could barely see anything even though the porch lights were on. My vision was limited to small area that surrounded Emily and Sam's house.

"Did you hear that?" Sara's head turned sharply towards mine and she grabbed my arm tightly again. Panic was quickly rising in her voice and face.

"No, what--" I couldn't even finish my sentence before I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Afraid of what I would see, I turned my head slowly, breathing in deeply.

A pale manstood lurking on the edge of Emily and Sam's front porch. He was paler than anyone I had ever seen, and he was good looking, too, not the handsome like Seth was, but scary looking. The way he looked scared me, especially how he was staring at us with hungry eyes. Red hungry eyes. His eyes were what tipped me off first. I knew that no normal person had red eyes. He had to be a vampire. The moment I realized this, I felt my heartbeat speed up rapidly and my breath shortened.

"Sara."

"Who is that man?" She had not figured it out yet, but she knew that he was not someone to be trifled with. He looked scary and even if I had not known he was a vampire, I would have wanted to stay as far away from him as possible.

"We need to run," I whispered to her, trying to stay calm for the both of us. She was already panicking. I knew that running wouldn't help us much. Vampires, from the little I knew about them, could run extremely fast. The one that now stalked us would be able to catch up with us in a matter of seconds. "If we get split up, don't wait for me. Just keep running. We'll meet back here later."

"Caroline, what is--?" She looked frightened, but I couldn't do this right now. We had to get away and fast. It was our only chance at survival.

"Just run," I screamed and the two of us took off into the woods surrounding the house, dodging tree limbs and roots along the way. I didn't dare look back to see if the vampire was following us—I couldn't make myself. But I knew he was. I could just feel it.

From the beginning, Sara and I were separated. I had longer legs than she did so naturally I ran faster. Everything seemed to be fine, but I knew that a vampire would not let two humans get away, especially not one that looked at us like that horrible one did.

When I heard Sara's sickening scream, it took all I had not to turn around and go back, but the image of Seth and seeing him again kept me going forward and pressing on. My legs were burning, I had been running so fast and hard. I was sure that the only thing that kept me from giving up was Seth so with the butcher knife still clutched in my hand, I ran.

"Ow," A tree root seemed to jump out of nowhere and trip me up. The butcher knife flew out of my hand and across the dirty ground as I fell hard into the earth. So much for my natural dancer's grace. I tried to push myself up off the ground, but the moment my foot had any weight on it, a shot of immense pain went through my leg. "Oh no, my ankle."

I had leg injuries before because of dance and I knew that what I was feeling was definitely because of my ankle and the nice fall I had just taken. "Great, this is just _great_."

Just then, out of nowhere, the vampire I had been trying to escape from jumped into my line of sight, leaves and sticks crunching under his bare feet. He was young looking, maybe mid-twenties at the oldest, and I wondered how he had become the way he was. I didn't have long to dwell on this thought as he crept towards me, a menacing look in his eyes.

My life was flashing before my eyes and the main thing I saw was the short amount of time I had spent with Seth. We had only been together one summer, one summer that felt like forever, but I knew that I loved him and that I couldn't spend my life without him. However at the moment, it was looking like he was going to have to spend his life without me.

The vampire leaned down towards me, his mouth open in a mix between a grimace and snarl. I could see his exposed teeth, sharp and blindingly white. He moved closer and closer towards me as the seconds seemed to tick by in slow motion. I could feel him perched over me. My heart was hammering in my chest.

Suddenly, a flash came from nowhere and the creepy vampire wasn't hovering over me anymore. I had started preparing myself for the horrible thing that was going to come, but it hadn't happened. For some odd reason, the vampire was gone and I wasn't quite sure why. All I knew was that I had to get out of there before the vampire came back. I struggled to push myself up off the ground, but I knew my life depended on it so I hobbled along on one foot.

"Do you need help?" A soprano, bell-like voice rang out of nowhere, startling me so bad that I painfully fell to the ground again. I looked around to see who the voice belonged to.

A pixie like girl appeared to my right. She was very pretty, abnormally pretty, with skin that was pale white and short, dark, spiky hair adorned the top of her head. She reminded me of Snow White almost. The most intriguing thing about her was her strange colored topaz eyes. They were unlike anything I had ever seen before.

"That would be nice," I said gruffly. She offered me her hand and I accepted it. Her skin was unnaturally cold, and I immediately pulled away at the feel of it, shocked. I shook my head at my behavior. Normally, I didn't talk to strange people I met in the middle of the woods, but I got a good vibe from her. She didn't seem like a bad guy to me.

She moved over to me quickly and wrapped her cool, strong arm around my back and supported all of my weight. She was much smaller than me and I was surprised that I didn't overpower her with all of my weight.

"Thanks, I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come along," I replied and she smiled at me, exposing her brilliant white teeth. Her smile, like Seth's, was contagious and I couldn't help but feel myself smiling along with her.

"You're welcome," She said cheerily, her dark hair blowing in the cool breeze. "Oh, I'm Alice Cullen, by the way."

With that, I blacked out.

* * *

"Alice, are you sure she'll be alright?" A male voice that sounded like smooth velvet knocked me out of my state of unconsciousness. I wasn't fully awake yet, but I could hear what was going on around me.

"Of course I am," The bell-like voice of Alice Cullen chimed out into the almost silent night. I had only heard her speak a few words, but I could recognize her voice anywhere. "She'll wake up in two minutes and thirty-three seconds."

"What did you say happened to her again?" A different voice said this time. It was almost as smooth as the first voice, but a little bit deeper. Just like the other two that spoke, this voice was lovely, lovelier than any human voice.

"She just passed out after I told her who I was," Alice explained casually. I didn't have complete control over my eyes yet so I couldn't see her, but I could visualize what she looked like. Her perfect image had been ingrained in my mind the minute I found out who she was.

"Do you think she knows who we are?" Another voice said. It belonged to a female and just like the other three voices, it was intoxicatingly beautiful. I could just sit here and listen to these four voices talk all day if I could.

"I'm not sure. Her future is kind of cloudy," Alice sounded a little downtrodden for some reason. "But I can see that she is going to need this butcher knife she was carrying sometime soon."

"A butcher knife? For what?" The velvety voice asked, perplexed. His voice was more beautiful than any of the others. It had some sort of old-fashioned cadence to it that I found fascinating. If his voice was that amazing, I could only imagine what he looked like.

"Again, I'm not sure," Alice replied to the man. "All I saw was me saying that she would need this sometime in the future. The things in front of her are so cloudy to me…Oh, she's waking up."

Slowly, but surely, my eyes opened, blinking rapidly as the adjusted to soft light of the moon shining down on me. I was laying on the hard ground in a clearing, surrounded by trees and whatnot. Standing over me closely were the most gorgeous people I had ever laid eyes on.

"Caroline, right?" The velvet voice belonged to a beautiful man with strange colored bronze hair and topaz eyes, the same topaz eyes Alice had. He was extraordinarily beautiful for a man. His high cheekbones and impeccable bone structure were highlighted by his perfect marble-like skin. In other words, he looked like a Greek god.

I noticed that I had been sitting down staring at him with my mouth wide open longer than acceptable so I closed my mouth and tried to calm myself down as much as possible before speaking. "Yeah, my name is Caroline. How did you know that?"

"I am Edward Cullen," My jaw fell even further. Edward Cullen was standing a few feet in front of me and no doubt these other inhumanly beautiful people were members of his family as well.

"And I'm Alice, but you already know that," The sprite-like girl looked exactly as she had earlier as she came up to me smiling cheerfully. She pointed to a huge guy with curly hair and serious muscles. He was kind of scary looking, but just as beautiful as the other two. "This is my brother Emmett, and this is my sister—"

"Bella Swan," I breathed as I looked at the girl, no, woman who stood in front of me. I had never seen her before, but some part of me knew who she was the minute I looked at her. "You're Bella Swan."

"Actually, it's Bella Platt now," She corrected me, smiling a little. Her face was heart shaped and had an innocent, but lovely quality about it. Dark chocolate hair flowed down her petite shoulders and back in precise yet subtle waves. She was absolutely beautiful. "Have we met before? I'm sorry, my human memories are a little fuzzy."

Standing before me was the girl who I had heard so much about. She had 'died' in a car crash years ago, but now she was alive, well, not really. She was a vampire. "No, we have never met before. I've just heard a lot about you, that's all."

"You're with one of the wolves?" Edward Cullen looked at me severely. His topaz eyes bore down on me heavily as I wondered how he knew that. "I can read minds."

Seth had told me that some of the Cullens possessed talents, like the mind-reader who I guessed was Alice since she had known exactly when I was going to wake up, but I didn't know that Edward Cullen was a mind reader. I felt embarrassed that he could see everything I was thinking.

"Don't worry," His angular, handsome face softened just a little bit. "I won't go snooping through your mind on purpose. I like to give people a little bit of privacy if I can help it."

"So, what are you doing out here?" Bella broke the awkward silence that had fallen between us all after Edward finished telling me about his mind reading skills. "I'm pretty sure you know that we're vampires and that you didn't just mysteriously wonder out here on your own."

"I was with my friend Sara," She popped up in my mind for the first time since I had woken up. Where was she? Was she okay? I could only hope that vampire hadn't gotten to her. "We wanted to know what was going on because we head some noises so we went outside for a minute when we saw that vampire Alice saved me from. He came after us so we ran, but we got separated."

"You ran from a vampire?" The big one, Emmett, said incredulously. He chortled slightly and shook his curly head. "You've got guts, girl."

"What's going on?" I changed the subject. I remembered that Seth was out here somewhere and so was a man-eating vampire who wanted to kill him and anyone else who stood in her way to Bella Swan. "Where are the wolves?"

"They're over in the clearing on the other side of the stream," Edward answered my question. I wasn't quite sure what to think about him. His personality was very strange. First, he is rude to me when he found out I was with Seth and now, he was being kind of helpful. I couldn't keep up with his mood swings. "They're regrouping."

"What do you mean by 'regrouping?'" I asked. I didn't know any military or battle terms. My battle terminology was very limited.

"We've lost Victoria for now, but she is still around here somewhere," Alice explained the situation a little bit clearer for me. I remembered what someone had said about her having an uncanny ability to escape difficulte situations. "The wolves are talking about the next move that they will make."

"Could you take me there?" I hoped they would. All I really wanted at the moment was to hold Seth in my arms and know that he was still alive and in one piece.

"You shouldn't even be out here. We will take you to somewhere safe. Where they are isn't safe for you," Emmett spoke this time and my hopes fell drastically. My heart ached to see Seth again, to know that he was okay. Knowing that I couldn't be with him at the moment was the hardest part. I was sure I looked just as crestfallen as I felt.

"Can you stand?" Bella asked me kindly. A look of pity was shining directly at me on her beautiful, heart shaped face and couldn't help but imagine how pathetic I must have looked, laying on the ground with a bum ankle and almost in tears because I missed Seth so much.

"I don't think so," My voice squeaked with emotion. If I hadn't been so overwhelmed, I would have been embarrassed, but I couldn't bring myself to actually care.

Bella reached out to me and helped me up off the ground gently. She wrapped her stone cold arms around my waist and supported all of my weight just like I was as light as a feather. I was very grateful to her for her thoughtfulness. There was some type of camaraderie between the two of us. We had connected somehow in the few minutes we had known each other.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked no one in particular as we walked, well, they walked and I hobbled at a quick pace through the forest I had ran through earlier.

"Back to Sam and Emily's house," Edward replied. His mind-reading once again flabbergasted me. I found it amazing, yet slightly creepy that he knew everything that was going on in my mind at the moment. I heard him chuckle slightly, probably at what I was thinking about him.

"What about Sara? Do you think she's alright?" I thought about the last time I had seen her and heard her scream. I could only pray that she had made it away from the vampire. What would I tell Embry if she had…?

"Wow, you ask a lot of questions," Emmett laughed heartily, his booming voice echoing throughout the dark forest.

Alice put a comforting, cold hand on my shoulder as we continued on our way. "We'll keep an eye out for her. Don't worry. Everything will be fine."

I couldn't help but doubt Alice's prediction that everything would be fine. I just didn't feel right about this whole situation…something was _off_. A queasy feeling sat in the pit of my stomach and I had a feeling that something bad was going to happen--soon. I didn't like that feeling and I tried to shake it off, but it wasn't going anywhere. Maybe I was just paranoid, I told myself, but deep down, a little part of me kept saying that something was wrong.

"Oh," Alice said out of the blue after a few moments of complete silence. "You are going to need this sooner or later."

She stretched her small hand out to me and resting carefully in her pale, white palm was the butcher knife I had grabbed out of Sam and Emily's kitchen earlier, the blade shinning dangerously in the moonlight overhead.

"Thanks," I cautiously grabbed the knife from Alice's hand. I was around vampires, after all, and I didn't want to cause some type of feeding frenzy with me as the meal.

After what felt like hours of walking, we emerged from the dark woods and into the small, secluded area where Emily and Sam's house stood. The porch light was still on and the moment I saw it, it stood as a beacon of hope for me, lighting my way back to the people I loved. No doubt Emily was still inside, possibly still asleep. Maybe Sara was there, too, and she was just as worried about me as I was about her.

"Caroline," Seth's sweet voice rang out to me. My head immediately went in the direction his voice was coming from and sure enough, there he was standing near the porch of Sam and Emily's house.

I ran to him as well as I could with a hurt ankle, pulling him into my open arms, and smothering him with kisses all over his face, careful not to hurt him with the knife I held in my left hand. It felt like I hadn't seen him in ages even though it had only been a few hours. Right now, I didn't care what was going on or who was around. I had Seth with me and that was all that mattered at the moment.

"What are you doing?" He rested his forehead on mine, warm, chocolate eyes staring down into mine. I felt like I was in heaven. "I've been so worried about you. We came back to check on you, Sara, and Emily, but you and Sara were gone. You have no idea what I've been going through."

"I think I can relate," I kissed him once more on the lips just to make sure that this was real and not a figment of my imagination. Yes, he was really there in front of me. This wasn't a dream. Seth was safe and everything was okay, for the moment at least.

"What happened and why do you have a butcher knife?" Seth had momentarily been distracted, but he wasn't going to let me get away with not telling him what had happened to me.

"Long story," As I relayed my story to him, his face went from looking worried to horrified in a matter of just a few seconds. I was so lost in my story that I didn't really notice the pained look that painted Seth's face. Even I had not realized how scary my story actually was until I was telling it to someone else. I had been so close to death only an hour or so ago. When I was done, I was shaking from fear.

"What happened to Sara?" Seth asked, concerned. I cringed. I had hoped that she had made it back to Sam and Emily's somehow, but since Seth didn't know where she was, I knew that she definitely hadn't made it back.

"I don't know," I said guiltly, feeling like the reason she was missing was partly my fault. I should have stayed with her, but there was nothing I could do about that now. We would all just have to hope for the best.

Seth pulled me close to him, as close as possible, like he was trying to mold us into one person so we would never be separated again. He said his next words so softly that I could barely hear them. "I don't know what I would have done if anything had happened to you."

"Nothing happened, though," As scared as I was, I knew that Seth was here now and that he would never let anything happen to me, ever. "I'm alright."

"I know," He kissed me lovingly on the forehead, his lips leaving a tingling sensation where the touched me that went all the way through my body like an electric shock. I was amazed that he still had this affect on me after all the time we had spent together.

"I hate to break this up, but we have a problem on our hands," Emmett pushed his way into the invisible bubble I had formed around Seth and me.

"Thank you," Seth said sincerely to the four members of the Cullen family that had saved my life. It went against his nature to be nice to vampires, but here he was doing that very thing.

"That's sweet and all, but we really do have a problem," Alice said franticly. She nodded her head over in the direction of the woods we had just came out of where five other vampires now stood, and from what I could tell, these were not the other members of the Cullen family. They were bad vampires, like the one that had tried to kill me earlier.

"Victoria," Edward growled, glaring murderously at one particular member of the other group. In the center of these new vampires stood one lone female with flaming red hair and pale skin just like every other vampire, but there was something very terrifying about her that the Cullens or the other vampires in her group did not possess. She was just as beautiful as every other vampire I had seen, and she had a sort of feline look to her features. Her jaw was set in determination. She looked as if she was on a mission, one that she would die trying to complete. The other thing I noticed about her was that her eyes were not red. They were completely and chillingly black. This was the vampire that had killed Kim, the one that was after Bella.

"Well, well, well, look what we have here," She prowled forward like a lioness, leaving the rest of her group behind her. This Victoria was clearly the leader. "Edward and Bella, how charming it is to see you two again."

None of the Cullens showed any fear as she moved closer and closer towards us, but I was shaking so hard that Seth was literally holding me up to keep me from falling to the ground for the thousandth time that night. Victoria scared me more than anything had ever scared me before in my life, and I had seen my fair share of scary things before, including the vampire that had almost killed me earlier.

"I wish we could say the same," Edward's velvet voice was icy cold and bit into the cold night air like a zap of lightning. The fierceness of it scared me. His beautiful, yet deathly face was just as frightening as his voice.

Victoria scowled at him and stopped her pacing. She sent a menacing glare our way before replying. "Let's cut to the chase, Edward, dear. You have taken something away from me that can never be replaced, and I only believe that they same treatment should be bestowed upon you. No one else has to be hurt, just give me your sweet little Bella, here."

"Never," Edward took a step closer to her, challenging her. This seemed to upset Victoria even more and she fumed with rage. It took her a good minute to calm down to where she could even speak.

"This doesn't have to be difficult, Edward," She seethed angrily, her fiery red hair blowing out behind her in the wind making her look like some sort of angry Greek goddess. "Just give me the girl and no one else has to be involved."

"No," Edward took another step towards Victoria, angering her even further than I thought was possible. I knew that this battle of words could only last for so long. Soon enough, someone would make the first move and I would be in the middle of something dangerous.

"Fine," Victoria exuded quiet rage down through her whole body. Edward was obviously trying her patience. She could not last much longer without becoming violent.

Suddenly, a loud boom sounded. It had happened so fast that I had not realized what was going on, but what I saw before me now was Victoria and Edward colliding. That noise that Sara, Emily, and I had heard earlier was not thunder or rocks crashing together. It was vampires fighting.

"Caroline, get out of here," Seth yelled at me over the noise as he directed me towards Sam and Emily's house. "It's not safe."

"No, I'm not leaving you," Seth and I had already been separated once and I couldn't handle being away from him again. My sense of self-preservation must have been gone to the wind because I actually wanted to stay here in the middle of a dangerous vampire fight.

"Please, just go, for me," He pleaded desperately with me to go inside. The look on his face was dire. As much as it killed me to hurt Seth, I knew I could not leave him again. It was better for the sake of my sanity to stay near him.

"No, Seth," I nearly screamed in protest. "I can't go!"

"You have to leave," He grabbed me by the hand and started dragging me towards Sam and Emily's house. I couldn't shake him off as much as I tried; he was too strong for me to get away.

One of Victoria's vampires was approaching me and Seth quickly and I shrieked as he got near us. Seth turned from me with one last look of hopelessness and right before my eyes he transformed into a wolf.

I had never seen Seth in his wolf form before. Sure, I had heard about what the wolves looked like many times from him and other members of the pack, but never had I seen them before. Seth had strictly kept me away from the guys when they were wolves. Instead of the guy I knew and loved, standing before me was a giant bear-like creature with sandy colored fur. If I hadn't have known any better I wouldn't have even thought it was a wolf. It was Seth and he was tearing a vampire to pieces in front of my eyes.

All around me was fighting. Alice was taking on a vampire from Victoria's group. As she ripped his head off, she pulled a lighter out of nowhere and started lighting the pieces of the corpse on fire. A sickly sweet stench lit up the air and I wrinkled my nose in disgust. Bella and Emmett were also at odds with vampires from Victoria's coven. They had already destroyed one of them, but the second one they couldn't seem to get a hold of. That was until Emmett grabbed one of the male vampire's arms and tore it off of his body. Bella quickly took out a lighter to finish the job. Edward was still clashing with Victoria. They weren't fighting physically at the moment, but I could tell that they were going at a battle of wills. They were well matched and I wasn't sure who would be able to win.

Seth had taken care of the vampire and he was now closing in behind Victoria, who hadn't noticed him yet in her haste to get out of Edward's way so she could get to Bella. As Seth got closer and closer towards Victoria, I became frozen to the ground where I was standing. Edward managed to keep her focused on him and Bella so that Seth could sneak up behind her. However, the plan backfired awfully. Victoria rounded on Seth, hitting him viciously with her fist. He flew in the air several feet away and hit the ground with a loud thud. I stood horrified, glued to my spot yards away.

Victoria was advancing more and more towards Edward now. I looked around hoping that Alice, Bella, and Emmett were going to come running to his rescue any moment, but they were all preoccupied trying to keep other members of Victoria's coven that had just shown up at bay. I glanced towards Seth, who was still in his wolf form laying on the ground deathly still. A shiver ran through my body.

Before I could even think about what I was doing, I was running, running fast and hard. I didn't run towards my Seth, but instead towards Edward and Victoria. Neither of them had noticed me coming near them, which is what I was hoping for. Knife poised in my hand, I did the only thing I knew to do. I stabbed myself in the chest and threw my body towards Victoria.

* * *

Cliffhanger.....yay!

So anyways, I will give 3000 cookies to anyone who can tell my where Bella's new last name came from. It shouldn't be that hard for any of you hardcore Twihards out there!

REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW...I think you get the picture.


	12. Far Away

Here is chapter 12! Only one or two more chapters (I haven't made up my mind if I'm going to do an epilogue yet, probably, but I'm not one hundred percent sure) and then this story will be over :( But I might do a sequel! It will probably be about Paul or Jacob, but I haven't decided yet. With school and everything, my life is getting so hectic that I barely have time to write anymore, but I'm trying, I promise!

Without out further ado, here is Chapter 12!

I don't own anything.

* * *

Pain shot through every single fiber of my body and the wound in my chest bled evenly out, causing me more pain than I thought imaginable. Victoria loomed dangerously over me. Her face torn, clearly debating whether she should continue her fight with Edward or give in to the thirst for my tasty blood. Because of her black, hungry eyes, I knew that she wouldn't be able to resist the temptation of an openly flowing wound for long. She stared at me as if I was piece of meat and I knew that it wouldn't take a while before she gave in to the temptation. Closing her eyes slowly, she took a long, deep breath.

Everything around me seemed to be flying by me like someone had taken a remote and hit the fast forward button. In a matter of seconds, Victoria had lost her battle of wills. She had given in to the bloodlust. As she drank from me, I screamed in absolute agony. The pain I was going through unreal, unlike anything else I had ever experienced. While Victoria continued her frenzy for blood, I could feel myself growing weaker and weaker as the seconds wore on. The pain, everything--it would all be over soon, I just had to keep telling myself that. It would all be over soon…soon.

Things started to get darker and I couldn't see straight anymore. Quickly, everything had gone from playing in fast forward mode to going in slow motion. I saw nothing but the dark sky that was bleary and unfocused. I couldn't hear anything either. It was as if I was underwater, drowning. I knew that I had lost too much blood to survive. In a matter of minutes, I would be dead.

Unexpectedly, in a gush of wind, Victoria was torn away from me, and I felt a tug on my hand and a sharp pain, but that didn't matter to me. My plan had worked. Edward Cullen had done what I had hoped for him to do, what I had planned for him to do. Just like Taha Aki's third wife had done in the legend, I had sacrificed myself so Edward would have a chance to finish Victoria off.

As I lay dying on the cold, hard ground, my life flashed before my very eyes, as cliché as it sounds. I saw my mom taking me to my very first ballet class, Ethan teaching me how to throw a baseball when we were younger, Ava and me going to get manicures and pedicures, and lastly when I met Seth for the first time. Seth zoomed into my mind, regrettably, and I hoped he was okay. Somehow, I knew he was.

I didn't want to think about Seth while I was laying there dying; I didn't even want to think about what my death would do to him. Like Kim's death had destroyed Jared, my death would do the same to Seth. I didn't want to do that to him, but by doing this, by stabbing myself and throwing myself in front of Victoria, I had already started the unstoppable process. He would understand, wouldn't he? I had done this for him, for the people we loved. Victoria would have killed them all, every last one of them, to get to Bella. Seth would have to understand.

The pain in my chest where I had stabbed myself was fading away, but only to be replaced by a new type of stitch, one that hurt even worse than the first one. A burning sensation was starting to materialize in my right hand. It was like a dull ache at first, intensifying as the seconds ticked by. As it progressed, my hand began to feel like it was on fire, like someone had literally taken a lighter and lit my whole hand on fire. The fire continued to move up my arm slowly—it felt like a wild fire burning everything in its path.

"Caroline," A smooth voice called out to me and through the pain I could hear it, but not differentiate who it was. My vision was still disturbed and I could not see who it was either, but I knew whoever it was wasn't going to hurt me. "Caroline."

"What's happening to her?" Through the fire, I heard the happiest sound I could think of. A panicked, yet angelic voice showed up at my right side near the other person. "What is wrong with her? Why is she screaming?"

"I'm not sure," The smooth voice said. Suddenly, I felt a cold touch on my arm and I leaned into it as much as possible. The cold was welcoming, it was drawing me in. It helped quell the fire burning through my veins a tiny bit.

"Caroline," The angel's voice rang out for a second time, more distraught than the first time. It sounded like heaven to hear my name coming from that voice. "Caroline, listen to me. Please, listen to me."

I heard another sound other than the two voices, one not as welcoming. A high pitched, bloodcurdling scream littered the air, and I wished for it to stop. What took me a moment to realize was that the person who was screaming was me, not anyone else. I tried to stop screaming, but I had absolutely no control over my actions.

"Why won't she stop screaming?" My angel shouted over my screams.

"Oh no," The smooth voice hissed, utter horror evident in the velvety undertones it possessed. "She bit her. Look at her hand. That's why she's screaming. It's the fire of the transformation."

The angelic voice cried out in anguish. Through my fogginess, I knew I didn't like the sound of the voice in pain. I wanted it to be happy, to laugh for me. "Isn't there anything you could do?"

"No," The velvety voice responded shamefully and hesitantly. "Once the transformation has started…it cannot stop."

I heard myself scream out in pain again, but I could not stop myself from screaming. I was not in charge of the actions of my body or my mind anymore. The fire was controlling me now.

"Edward," A third voice came into the conversation, a female voice. I recognized it just the way I had the first and second voices. "Edward, what is happening to her?"

"Victoria bit her," The voice that belonged to Edward Cullen replied quietly. "The change has begun."

I screamed out in pain again as I felt a warm hand grab mine. The whole right side of my body was now burning in agony now as the fire scorched my veins more and more. The torture was unbearable; even death would have been more welcoming than the fire that raged through me.

"Please, just put her out of her pain," The angelic voice sobbed harshly. I felt the hand holding mine tighten significantly. Even though the warm skin burned me, the touch of the rough skin comforted me greatly and I squeezed back as hard as I could through the pain. I wasn't sure if the person holding my hand had even felt it.

"Couldn't you try to suck the venom out?" The female voice searched for a solution to the dire problem lying in front of them. "Carlisle did say that if the venom hadn't spread too far that--."

"I know what Carlisle said," Edward snapped, frustrated. He sighed softly, so softly I could barely hear him. "Sorry, I didn't mean to yell…But I don't think…I can't. I'm sorry."

"I could do it," The female voice replied quickly. Complete silence followed the sound of her voice for a few seconds afterwards. "Caroline doesn't have to die, not today."

"No, Bella, you don't have enough control yet," Edward reprimanded her gently. "We will just have to let the transformation take its course. There is nothing we can do."

But Bella, the female voice, was not through fighting for my life yet. She continued to plead for my life even though Edward was strongly against it. "Edward, we can't do that. This girl, she has a life, friends, family, and things to hold onto to. We can't just take her away from all of that. Please, just let me try. You can be right here with me the whole time."

"It's not my decision to make. It's his," I couldn't see the look on Edward's hansome face, but I was sure that it wasn't a very happy one.

"Please, save her," The angelic voice bellowed out once more, and I could feel hot tears falling on my face as I thrashed and flailed my body around, trying anything to stop the fire from coursing through my veins any longer.

"I'll be here, Bella," Edward reassured her. "I'll help you stop."

Suddenly, the same type of pain I had felt when Victoria had first attacked me was happening once more, and I shrieked loudly as the discomfort continued. The burning sensation was slowly seeping out of my body, but a different kind of ache kept going on in my body. I felt as if all of my life was being pulled right out of me.

"Stop, Bella, you have to stop now," Edward's voice sounded far off, like I was on one side of a tunnel whole he was on the other whispering to me. I was straining to hear the words he was saying. "Bella, stop, you're going to kill her."

The pain stopped immediately, but things still continued to fade away from me. I was becoming less and less aware of my surroundings. My body felt almost completely numb. I still wasn't in control of my body, but I was too far off to even care.

"Is everything alright?" The angelic voice asked, sounding worried and relieved at the same time. "Is she okay?"

"We still need to get her to a hospital, but she'll be fine. I promise you," Edward replied, his voice fading away even further as he spoke. Those were the last words I heard before darkness overtook everything.

* * *

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The loud blaring of a machine beeping woke me up. As I opened my eyes slowly and carefully, a bright, white light nearly blinded me. The room I was in was foreign and unfamiliar. It took me a few seconds to realize where I was at the moment; I was at a hospital. That beeping noise was the sound of the heart monitor I was hooked up to which meant that, by some miracle from above, I was alive.

Sitting beside me in an uncomfortable looking chair was Seth, asleep and hunched over onto my bed. His large hand rested over my small one casually, heating up my entire body. I wanted to see his beautiful face that was hidden behind his hair and to hear his voice. It had felt like such a long time since I had seen him last, since I had touched him, but I didn't have the heart to wake him up. He looked too peaceful for me to disturb him.

"That was a pretty close call," I looked up at the sound of someone entering my room. There stood Leah Clearwater, Seth's somewhat scary sister, leaning against the door frame and looking as gorgeous and fierce as she always did. Her long, lustrous black hair fell down her back like a waterfall and even in the horrible hospital lights, her skin managed to glow and shimmer like she had just stepped off the cover of a magazine. Needless to say, she intimidated more than a little bit.

"Yeah, it was," My voice came out sounding hoarse and raspy, like I was a chain smoker or something. I pushed myself up into a sitting position weakly. "How long have I been in here?"

"Oh, two days," Leah said nonchalantly, but I could tell that there was something behind that casualness that wasn't very good.

"Two days?" I exclaimed loudly, but then I remembered Seth was sleeping beside me and I lowered my voice. "I've been in here for two days?"

"Well, you did stab yourself in the chest," She responded bluntly, and I felt my cheeks darken a little. I was a little embarrassed over the extremes I had gone to. "You're just lucky you missed your heart. The doctor said if you had stabbed any closer that you would have died immediately."

Silence engulfed us for a few minutes. I longed to ask Leah about Seth. Was he okay? Did he hate me? Was he going to want to kill me when he woke up? But I couldn't seem to get the questions out of my mouth. I was too afraid of what the answers would be.

"Seth is fine, just so you know," Leah seemed a little angry at me, and I shrunk back into the scratchy hospital pillow and sheets and wished that I would just disappear. "He's been here the whole time. They tried to make him leave the first day, but he wouldn't."

"Is something the matter, Leah?" I said in broken up phrases. Truth be told, Leah scared the crap out of me, and I didn't like being on her bad side, which many people had told me was her only side.

"Do you not realize what you have done?" Her beautiful face turned from one of masked ferocity to one of unrelenting, pure fury. "What you could have done to my brother?"

I felt as small and as meek as a mouse as she released all her passionate vehemence on me. What she was saying was one hundred percent true. I had stabbed myself in the heart then threw myself in front of a hungry, man-eating vampire, all without thinking about Seth, the love of my life, and what it would do to him. After Leah had finished berating me within an inch of my life, I felt lower than I ever had before.

"I'm sorry," I cried ardently and buried my face in my hands, hot tears pouring down my cheeks. Screaming had never made me respond well, and Leah had done more than enough of that to have me crying for days. "I just wanted to help. She would have killed everyone."

Leah didn't say anything else and even though I couldn't see her, I knew she was still glaring at me maliciously. I could feel her intense stare on me, like she was wishing I would just go away.

"Caroline," Seth's voice shook me out of my state of unhappiness. Tears were still pouring down my face when he threw his arms around me and swallowed me up in a huge hug. "You're alright."

I hugged him back and tried to smile, but knowing all the pain I had caused him, it was very hard to pretend like nothing was wrong. A sharp pang went through my heart, and it wasn't because I had stabbed myself a few days earlier.

"Why are you crying?" His warm, chocolate eyes went from overjoyed to sad in less than a millisecond. "What's the matter, Caroline?"

"I'm sorry," I sobbed into him; my tears were flowing freely down my cheeks and onto his wrinkled white shirt. I didn't have the courage to look him in the eyes. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to, it just happened. Seth, I didn't _want_ to hurt you, really I didn't…I just did it. I don't know why, but I did. Please, tell me that you don't hate me. I would understand if you did, though."

"Caroline," He placed his warm hand on the side of my face tenderly, "I could never hate you."

"Leah said you could," My sobbing continued, but it was more like undistinguishable blubbering at this time. "She said that I was horrible to you and that you should hate me for what I did."

Seth sent a murderous glare towards his sister, who was still standing near the front of the room watching all the events play out. I had never seen him so mad before. "Why did you tell her that, Leah?"

"She deserves to know what she almost did to you," She replied bitterly. "If her stupid little plan had actually gone through and she had died, it would have ruined your life. It would have killed you."

"That's enough," Even in his anger, Seth remained the utter definition of calm, but I guess that was just who he was. "Leah, leave."

Leah walked, no stormed, out of the room with one last glance behind her, leaving Seth and me all alone. My tears had tried up, but I still felt like the worst person in the world for what I had done.

"Are you alright?" He asked gently, taking my hand in his warm one. I noticed for the first time that an IV was attached to it.

"What happened to me?" That night seemed so far away and foggy; all I could really remember was stabbing myself and Victoria going after me. Everything else seemed like a blur.

"After you stabbed yourself," He winced noticeably, "Victoria grabbed you. She had almost killed you when Edward Cullen managed to throw her off and get rid of her…Where did you get an idea like that, Caroline?"

I was kind of ashamed to tell him what I had been thinking at that very moment, but I knew he would find out sooner or later. "Well, a week or so ago, the night that the pack went out to meet with the Cullens, I stayed with Emily, and she told me some of the Quileute legends. There was one--."

"She told you about the third wife, didn't she?"

"Yes, that was the one," Silence fell between the two of us uncomfortably.

"I understand that you wanted to help, but why didn't you leave it up to us? You were almost killed, Caroline," He said painfully. I didn't like that I had caused him pain.

"I feel so useless sometimes. Just sitting around and waiting for you to come back after fighting the battles isn't fun, Seth," I opened up to him completely. "I'm tired of just being Lois Lane, sitting back and letting you save me. I want to be Superman, too, sometimes."

Seth reached his hand up and tucked a strand of falling dark hair behind my ear softly. "But you don't have to be. I would do anything for you. You know that, right?"

"I know," I nodded in response to his question. "I just don't like sitting around and waiting for you, not knowing if you're going to come back in one piece or not. Do you know how hard it is for me to let you go every time you have to go off and fight vampires? It's torture, Seth."

"Believe me, I know how you feel," Seth smiled slightly, and once again I was amazed at his ability to stay happy and calm in the toughest of situations. That was one of the things I loved most about Seth. "I definitely know how that is. When you're not around me, I go crazy. I'm always worrying about where you are and what you're doing and if you're okay or not. You're all I think about, the only thing on my mind. I would do anything for you, Caroline. If that means letting you do whatever you want, then I'll do it."

"I love you," I replied, tearing up again. He closed in the gap between our lips and kissed me softly. When our lips met, an electric spark ran through the length of my body and I shivered. Seth's warm hands travelled up my arms and tangled up in my hair.

He broke away from me breathing heavily and rested his forehead on mine. Seth smiled that smile that I loved so much and I couldn't help but smile back. "I love you, too. I don't even want to think about what I would have done if anything had happened to you."

"Something else happened, didn't it?" I was getting that vibe that I wasn't just in the hospital from the knife wound, otherwise I would have been out of here sooner.

Seth looked a little hesitant to tell me, but he gave in after a few minutes of thinking it over. "Yes, uh, Victoria…she bit you."

"She did what?" I nearly screamed and my heart monitor skipped a beat. Seth's head immediately turned towards the machine and his eyes rested on the slightly erratic pattern my heart was making.

"She bit your hand," He motioned towards the hand he was not holding and on it was a large, crescent-shaped scar. The scar was very visible because it was a shade lighter than the rest of my skin and it was cold, a few degrees colder than the rest of my body.

I examined it with a fascination I had never felt before. I had been bit by a _vampire _and survived. This was an unimaginable feat. "Wow. How am I still alive?"

"Well, when we—that is me, Edward Cullen, and Bella Swan—realized that you had been bit, Edward told me that the only choice was to let you become one of _them_," Seth cringed and I felt myself do the same. "Then Bella came and she told us that there was a way, but she would have to suck the venom out of your body and that there was a chance that she would accidentally…kill you."

"So, she did it? Bella Swan saved me?" I asked incredulously. This was all turning out to be some type of distorted fairy tale with me at the center of it.

"She did. Then we brought you here, to the hospital. They've had you drugged up pretty well so you have been out of it for a while," Seth finished telling me the events involving me that had taken place over the last few days. He left sweet kisses all over my face, making every nerve in my body feel like it was on end.

"Seth," His name slipped out of my mouth as a mere whisper, but he still heard it and he continued to kiss up and down my jaw line. Shivers ran down my spine as I knotted my hands in his inky hair.

My heart monitor was going crazy and the pattern was all over the place. If I had even cared, it would have been embarrassing, but the only thing that mattered was that I had Seth with me and that he was in my arms. He was all I cared about, my life.

A sharp knock interrupted our moment, which I was sad to see end. A nurse opened the door and peeped in. All I could see of her was her head of blonde hair and a little of her generic blue scrubs. "Is everything alright in here?"

"Yes, everything is fine," I blushed deeply, color filling my pale cheeks. The blonde nurse nodded suspiciously at us before leaving the room.

"Your mother probably wants to see you, and so does Ethan. They were both in the cafeteria the last time I heard from them," Seth told me. "Ava's here, too. She's in the waiting room with some of your other ballet friends. They've been waiting here all morning to see you."

"I want to see them," I longed to see Ava and Ethan especially to apologize for the way I had treated them the last time we had talked. It was hard to believe that had only been a few days ago; it felt like years.

"I'll go get them for you," He moved to get up from the chair he was sitting in, but I remained holding onto his hand as tightly as possible. "I'll be back."

"You promise?"

"I promise, Caroline."

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REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW!


	13. The End

So this is the end, sadly, but I'm glad to wrap up the story. I have a lot of school stuff going on now so it has been rather hard to update regularly lately. I'm so thankful to all of my readers and I love you all greatly! To all of you who read and reviewed, you made this story happen, not me.

Vi908

AN- I don't own Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, or Breaking Dawn, Steph Meyer does

**Check my author's note at the bottom for some important information after you read the chapter!**

* * *

"I'm so so so so sorry. Please forgive me, please. You have to forgive me, Caroline," Ava latched onto my arm and begged like no tomorrow. She looked more upset than I had ever seen her before in the long time we had been friends. I could tell that the fight going on between the two of us had taken a toll on her just like it had me.

"Ava, I already told you that I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago," I laughed and tried to remove her death grip from my arm, but she still managed to hold on since I was still weak from my "accident," the vampire attack that we had barely been able to pass off as me accidentally falling on a knife while trying to cook. I wasn't sure who had come up with that brilliant story yet, but I knew that it wasn't a very good one. I mean, seriously. Even I'm not that klutzy.

I pulled a scratchy, hospital blanket up around me. It was extremely cold in the hospital room and Seth wasn't here to keep me warm. He had stepped outside to give Ava and me some privacy earlier. Although I was missing him greatly, I knew I had to make up with Ava. I just wasn't the same person without her.

"Are you sure you do? 'Cause I would completely understand if you hated me right now. What I did to you wasn't right. I should have told you, you are my best friend, after all," She responded quickly, her blue eyes wide and desperate. She looked like an utter mess, a difficult task for Ava: her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail and she was dressed in a pair of sweats and flip-flops, and she didn't have any make-up on at all. It was so un-like her to look like that. I had to do a double take when she walked in the room.

"It's alright, Ava," I reassured her, patting her hand softly. She had filled me in on everything that went down between her and Ethan: how they started dating, etc. I understood now, and, besides, if anyone was dating my brother at least it was Ava and not some random slut. "I freaked out and that wasn't right. It really wasn't that big of a deal; I should have just sat down and listened to you and Ethan instead of running around and screaming."

Ava looked at me again pitifully and my heart hurt. I didn't like the two of us to be on the rocks. She was my best friend no matter what had happened between the two of us before. "So, are we friends again?"

"Of course we are friends. We always will be," I pulled her towards me in a hug as well as could seeing as I was in a hospital bed. It made me happy to know that everything was good between the two of us again.

"Caroline, I cannot believe you did this to yourself. Seriously? You tripped while cooking and fell on a butcher knife? Aren't you supposed to be a graceful ballerina, girl?" Ava joked at my misfortune and I chuckled uncomfortably, but she didn't seem to notice.

"Well, even ballerinas trip every once in a while," I bluffed and Ava looked at me skeptically. Truth be told, I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to pull of the story that they had made up for me to tell everyone. The people that knew me knew I wasn't like that at all.

"So when can you finally bust out of this joint?" Ava joked half-heartedly, looking around at the many machines and IVs that were hooked up to my body at the moment.

"The doctor said if everything stays okay that I should be out of here by this afternoon at the earliest," I replied. I had grown kind of restless in the little span of time since I had woken up; the hospital room was suffocating me. It was time to get out and go home.

"That's good," She stated. Another sentence seemed to be on the tip of her tongue, but she hesitated to say it. After a few moments of silence, she came right and asked. "Do you know when you'll be able to dance again?"

I could understand where Ava would be hesitant to ask this question. I had been seriously injured, almost killed. There could have been a chance that I would have never danced again, but, fortunately, that was not the case. "It's all relative to how fast I heal. It could be a couple of weeks maybe a month or two."

"That sucks, Caroline. Madame Levine isn't going to be happy," We both laughed thinking about the lady we took ballet from. I could just see her face now when she found out I wouldn't be able to dance for so long.

"Ah, I don't care that much," I said truthfully. I'd been thinking about ballet a lot since I had been informed by the doctor that it would take a while before I could dance again, and I'd come to a few conclusions. "I've learned through all this mess that dancing isn't that big of a deal. Yeah, I do love it, but I'm just lucky to be alive right now. It could have been much worse than me not being able to dance for a while, much, much worse."

Ava pondered this for a moment before she nodded her head with me in agreement. "You are right, I guess. It's hard to admit it, but there are a lot of things more important in life than ballet."

* * *

Even though I had been let out of the hospital a couple of days earlier, I was still practically immobile and useless. I couldn't really do anything because I was so weak from all the blood loss and strain on my body. Seth had been there practically the whole time doing whatever I needed him to do. He helped me move around my house when my mom and Ethan weren't home, he made me lunch, breakfast, and sometimes dinner (they weren't always good but I ate them anyways), and, generally, he was just there for me when I needed him.

"How do you do that?" I asked incredulously as he picked me up into his arms as if I was as light as a feather and placed me on the couch where we were about to watch a movie, my feet never once touching the ground.

"Do what?" He said casually, like he had just done nothing at all. I had learned that Seth was like that a lot. He always did a lot of stuff that astounded me, but they were never a big deal to him.

"How do you just be Superman all the time?" I was wide-eyed at all that was Seth. He had always been my Prince Charming, opening doors, pulling out chairs, opening jars when I couldn't open them myself, but ever since I had been hurt, he had stepped it up majorly.

"I think you are a little confused, Silly," He plopped down beside me on the couch after he had popped the movie into the DVD player. "I'm not Superman; I'm a werewolf."

"Well, you're a mighty good werewolf," I pulled him towards me and basked in his warmth. I never had to have a blanket anymore. Seth was my own personal heater.

"Oh, Sara wanted me to tell you that she wants to go shopping with you when you're well enough," He informed me. Sara, Embry's imprint and the girl I had been separated from during the vampire attack, had somehow gotten away from the vampire chasing after us, thank God. She was a sweet girl and I could see myself being better friends with her in the future.

Seth and I watched the rest of the movie, which was _The Dark Knight_ by the way, in silence. It was good, but not really my type of movie. Seth seemed to really like it though. I had spent most of the movie thinking about something I hadn't gotten around to asking Seth since I had woken up in the hospital. It had been on my mind a lot lately, but I was a little afraid to ask because I wasn't sure how Seth would react.

"Are you okay?" Seth looked at me, concern showing clearly in his chocolate brown eyes. "You aren't in pain or anything, right? I can get you something if you are."

"Yeah, I'm fine," I answered him and looked into his eyes, the eyes that I could drown in, as cheesy as it sounds. "Why?"

"You're just kind of quiet tonight. Do you have something on your mind?" He knew me too well, a good thing and a bad thing, I guess.

"You could say that," I was a little skeptical about telling Seth what I had been thinking about. It wasn't that big of a deal that I knew, but I was curious as to what had happened.

"What is it?" He asked inquisitively.

"I'm not sure if I should tell you," I mumbled, kind of ashamed that I didn't want to tell him. It was Seth, after all. He was supposed to understand everything about me, wasn't he?

He looked a little hurt and I cringed in response. Had I hurt him by not telling him what was on my mind? "Caroline, you know you can tell me anything and I won't get angry. I'm here. If you really don't want to tell me, you don't have to."

"It's not that I don't want to tell you…I'm just not quite sure how you'll respond is what I'm worried about," I set it straight. I knew that I could talk to Seth whenever I wanted to, but this was a touchy subject.

"I promise that I will not get mad if you choose to tell me," He held up his hand like he was testifying in court and smiled a little to lighten the mood up. My resolve broke: I had to tell him.

"Okay, so what happened with the…Cullens?"

Seth didn't reply for a few seconds and I was worried that I had upset him, but when he did finally talk I was in for a world of shock. "Why do you think I would be mad about you bringing up the Cullens? I'm very thankful to them. They saved your life."

"It's just that you're a werewolf and they're vampires," I was confused by his response. This just didn't seem to make any sense. Werewolves and vampires were mortal enemies. They were supposed to hate each other with the passion of one thousand burning suns.

"That's true, but they also saved your life and that changes everything," He placed his warm hand on my cheek and caressed it gently, like I was a doll made of china or porcelain and I would break in any second. "If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have you right now."

I wasn't sure how to respond to Seth, but I chose to go on with my questions anyways. "So what happened to them? Where are they now?"

"They moved to Olympia a day or two ago, said it was getting time for them to go on to the next place, and since Bella is from Forks and she misses it they decided to move to Olympia because it's close, but not so close that people will recognize them. The pack let them go because they helped with Victoria. We couldn't help but know that they weren't bad."

I thought about Bella and what she had done for me. She had been the one to suck the venom out of my blood, to keep me from becoming a vampire. She was responsible for keeping me with Seth and the rest of my family and friends. "I just wish I could thank Bella for all that she did for me."

"I've been saving this for when I thought the time was right, and I guess now is as good a time as ever," Seth reached into the pocket of his jean cutoffs and pulled up a folded, slightly crinkled up piece of paper. He handed it to me and I looked at him quizzically.

"What is this?" I flipped the note around in my hands, looking at the piece of paper strangely and wondering what it was.

"Just read it, Caroline. I haven't read it yet, but I know that you are going to want to read this."

I unfolded the piece of paper and flattened it out where I could read it. The ink was slightly smeared, like whoever wrote it had written it so quickly that the ink hadn't had time to dry when it was folded, and the writing was barely legible, but I could still make it out.

_Caroline,_

_I know that it is strange that you're getting a letter from me since I barely know you, but by the time that you're awake I know that I'll be long gone and I won't be able to explain some things with you. I just wanted to tell you why I saved your life. I knew the minute I met you that you were special, that there was something different about you that separated you from other humans, and now I know what that is: you're a dancer, just like me. Ballet is my passion, my life, just like it is yours and I guess that the ballerina in me knew that you were a dancer as well and that you couldn't die. You have much more life ahead of you. You have a family, friends, and, most of all, you have Seth. He loves you so much. I could tell that even in the short time I was around the two of you. _

_Due to circumstances, we will probably never see each other again, but know that I'm out there if you need me. We ballerinas have to stick together in this world._

_Sincerely,_

_Bella Swan Platt_

"Wow," I was astounded by what I had just read. It had not come as more of a shock to have received a letter from Bella Swan, the girl who everyone thought was dead, but was actually a vampire, about why she had saved me, and it turns out she's a ballerina, too.

"Well, I guess you know now," Seth shrugged his broad shoulders before wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me close to him.

"Yeah, I guess," Still, I was dumbfounded by all the information I had just taken in. It all came as a shock to me. "Isn't it just weird how she was a ballerina, too?"

"It is quite ironic," Seth agreed with me, shaking his head full of hair. I was sure he was just as surprised as I was to find out the whole situation. "Speaking of ironic, have you heard about Paul?"

"Nope. What happened to Paul? Did he finally explode in the middle of Wal Mart or something?" I asked him inquiringly. Though I hate to say it, I was always down for a good piece of gossip, even in a time of shock like this.

Seth shook his head and laughed. "You will never guess. It's something you would never see happening to Paul."

"Oh, what? Did he find a piece of wood that looked like the mother Mary on First Beach? Whatever it is can't be that great."

"He imprinted," Seth seemed to find something comical in the words he spoke. I didn't really see what was so ironic about Paul imprinting. Didn't almost all werewolves imprint?

"So?" It was no big deal, to me at least. I wasn't sure why Seth was getting such a kick out of this whole Paul situation.

"He imprinted on a vampire."

"What?" I nearly screamed. Now, that was a big deal. A very big deal. "What happened? _How _did that happen? Isn't that, like, against a werewolf's very nature or something?"

"Well, apparently one of Bella's friends was turned into a vampire around the same time she was and when Paul, Sam, and Jake were talking with the Cullens the last time before they left she showed up out of the blue and Paul imprinted on her," Seth told an abbreviated version of the story, no doubt, but it was still very strange. Paul hated vampires more than any of the werewolves, and now he had imprinted on one. It was just plain crazy.

"What has this world come to?" I questioned, thinking about all the bizarre things that had happened to me this summer. In just a matter of three months, I had found the love of my life, who was a werewolf, had a friend killed by a vampire, became friends with several werewolves, and, to top it all off, I had nearly been killed by a vampire myself. "If someone had told me these things were going to happen to me a year ago, I would have said they needed to go to a mental institution, but here I am now."

"The world hasn't come to anything," Seth corrected me. "All of these things were happening before you knew they were. The world is just the same as it was before only now you know about all these things."

"I guess you're right," I sighed, letting my head fall naturally into the crook of Seth's neck. "It just seems unreal, like I can hardly believe all these things have happened to me."

"Would you change it?" He asked me seriously after a few minutes of nothing but the sounds of us breathing. "Would you change everything that has happened this summer to go back to a normal life?"

"You're crazy, Seth," I reached up and ruffled his silky black hair. My hand trailed gently down to his face and cupped his smooth jaw. I looked up into his eyes and couldn't help but smile. "As much as I think this whole thing that has happened this summer is bizarre and strange and out of control, I wouldn't change a single thing that happened, except for maybe Kim dying and almost getting murdered by that vampire, but you know what I mean. This has been the best summer of my life, and I mean that."

Seth's eyes were scorching and he responded by pulling me towards him and wrapping me up in his arms and planting a deep kiss on my lips. I could not protest in any way, shape, or form.

"I know what you mean," He rested his warm forehead on mine and I felt my lips spread into a wide smile.

* * *

...it's done! What did you think? Did you like the way it ended? I had a hard time deciding how I wanted it to end, but I finally chose to have everything work out all right. I'm a big sucker for happily ever afters and I couldn't just have a character I love end up miserable.

Anyways...

**THERE WILL BE A SEQUEl..of sorts. It will be another companion story involving Liz, Bella's friend from Save the Last Dance, and Paul. I'm really excited about this story because I have developed a new obssession with Paul (Alex Meraz is a hottie!). It might be a few weeks before I get the first chapter out, but don't lose hope. It will be here sooner or later.**

So, until then!


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